Nora H. sent in this excellent example of how advertisers gender chores. The ad goes through how generations and generations of women have done laundry.
For more examples, see these: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,.
See also our posts about how funny it is when men do housework: one, two, here, and three.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 12
Autumn — December 2, 2009
Aghfdsgjdfs
This ad drives me crazy. It even aired in between "Mad Men".
Jamie — December 2, 2009
"...even a male or two." O_o
It would've been seriously AWESOME if it had just been a man at the end doing laundry after all that talk of "your mother, and her mother..." What a great twist. Maybe it could have even been a man with his daughter, instead of the mom. OR even a man teaching his son how to do laundry.
Oh well, better luck next time.
The Martian — December 3, 2009
This commercial also reinforces white privilege. The commercial ends with "pure white," reinforcing an association between "white/whiteness" and "purity." I suggest tagging it as well under "white privilege" (or similar categories).
karinova — December 7, 2009
Two things:
1) I sure do wish they'd thought to have mom kickin' it on the couch for that one moment where dad's doing the laundry. Then again, maybe he's a single dad.
2) Is it me or are the first two women servants? Their clothes, and the fact that there are two of them seems to imply it. Which, once I noticed it, gave the whole "your mother, your grandmother, and her mother" thing a strange flavor. From a quick google, it looks like the washer shown is from around 1908 or so. Putting the scene, as I suspected, in my great grandmothers' time. Thing is, I'm pretty sure that... well, let's just say: my great grandmothers would have been the servants. So... yeah.
Critical nostalgia failure.
I want (manly) candy — December 21, 2009
[...] It’s not so much the blatant sexism, which is all too common–see Dockers, Dell, Clorox–but the pragmatic issues. Was there really an untapped market of men who weren’t eating [...]