In this Farm Bureau Insurance ad, a father and son paint a room pink and commiserate about how their lives will be ruined by the arrival of a baby girl.
1. Essentialize gender. A girl is coming? That means playing with dolls and having tea parties. Girls are girls. Us, we’re boys, so automatically we…
2. …belittle femininity. The stuff girls do is boring and trivial. Only girls would want to do those things. Girls are such a drag!
In short, all girls are girly and girly stuff is dumb.
I didn’t find it, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt; maybe they made the opposite commercial, too. One in which a mom and her daughter cringe over the idea of having to put up with booger-flinging and farting at the table.
But that would be equally bad. We don’t know a child’s personality just by anticipating the stuff between their legs. And it’s not true that male and female humans are so different as to enjoy entirely non-overlapping sets of things.
In daily life, we recognize each other for the complex and varied people that we are. Think about it. Practically the only place we see stereotypes this retrograde are on TV and in the movies. We’re not “opposite sexes,” but we’re surrounded by the idea that we are.
Thanks to @DustinStoltz anyway!
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 11
Jewel of Toronto — January 7, 2015
I have to disagree that "Practically the only place we see stereotypes this retrograde are on TV and in the movies." I only wish.
Everytime a colleague gets pregnant I hear variations on this theme. Boys are active and demanding therefore challenging for moms. Girls are prissy and frilly therefore challenging for non-girly moms.
And these are educated people.
We’re Not “Opposite Sexes,” But This Ad Wants You To Think We Are - Treat Them Better — January 7, 2015
[…] We’re Not “Opposite Sexes,” But This Ad Wants You To Think We Are […]
Bill R — January 7, 2015
Using hyperbole like yours to highlight such phenomena, mildly exemplified by this tame ad, actually weakens your proposition. In short, you shot at the wrong target...
Johnson — January 7, 2015
Girls don't play with dolls. Girls run around and plays with boys. Boys run around and chase after girls. This is the nature of the play... Unless your boy is a nerd, then, in which case, he'll be just in a corner by himself, lost in his head, thinking about stuff.
Dan — January 8, 2015
I think it's going a little far to say this ad "belittles" femininity, or claims that girly stuff is dumb. The guys in the commercial just aren't in to it. My wife isn't in to Doctor Who; she's made that clear. She will still watch it with me on occasion though. I appreciate it, and I never took her lack of interest as belittling.
Obviously..... — January 8, 2015
The issue for our children is that we set expectations for their behavior and personalities before they are born. All that does is set the family up for great pain when the kids don't turn out the way parents and siblings want them to be.
Toranosuke — January 15, 2015
Imagine if they changed just one word in that ad, so that the boy (or the father) says "Does this mean we /get/ to play with dolls and have tea parties?"
It might still reinforce harmful stereotypes about femininity, admittedly, but at least it represent a slight rupture in, or a challenge against, harmful molds of masculinity & masculine demeaning of femininity.