marriage/family

The Home Made Simple Squad is a new ad campaign for Proctor & Gamble cleaning products. Five women make up the Squad. From Lori’s bio:

‘I love to entertain in my home, and when people come over, I want them to walk in and immediately feel welcome and comfortable. So I make sure my house is always looking good and smelling fresh.’ Lori, 37, prides herself on her clean and well-organized home that’s always ‘company-ready’. Lori is disciplined about more than just caring for her home – she’s also recently lost 95 lbs, and keeps fit with a regimen of healthy eating, power walking and yoga.

So not only is she a good housekeeper, she keeps herself fit and trim, too!

Although all of the bios mention that the women have children and are busy, not a single one mentions a husband, partner, or other adult who might have some role in keeping a house clean. Or, for that matter, making the kids clean up after themselves.

Thanks to an anonymous commenter on another post for bringing my attention to this one!

NEW! This vintage ad relates sweeping the floor to dancing… because cleaning vinyl-plastic tile flooring, unlike cleaning other kinds of floors, is a kick!

An Anonymous Reader sent another example of the message that women absolutely love cleaning!  The bucket reads, “What could be better than this?”  I suppose it could be tongue-in-cheek, but I’m not getting that vibe.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

This image demonstrates the disproportionality in the marriage market across the United States (found here). Basically, if you’re a single, heterosexual woman on the west coast or a single, heterosexual man in the New York area, you’re in luck!

NEW! This map is now available in an interactive form in which you can choose which age group to look at.  Below I’ve pasted in screen shots of my current dating pool (30-45) and what I have to look forward to (yikes!).  Click here to interact with the map yourself.

Every time I see the cover of Parenting Magazine I’m surprised by the tagline:

“What matters to moms”

Here is the cover of the most recent issue. Where are dads? What sort of parenting do they do?

This is an ad for Allstate’s retirement programs; it appeared on the back cover page of The New Yorker. What struck me is that the ad is using the fact that women leave the workforce to care for children as a tactic to scare families into buying their product:

The average woman spends 11 years out of the workforce taking care of family. Leaving her without enough retirement money to take care of herself. Those 11 years are spent doing important work, caring for children or elderly parents. But then can also hurt her ability to retire. Fact is, women are still earning less than men do, and they live longer…Women care for America. It’s time we showed that America cares about their future.

Notice the picture: it’s a woman with a small child and a stroller, all about to fall off into the large crevice in the $20 bill.

I’m really not sure quite what to make of this or what my take on it is.

From a recent article on men’s increasing comfort with wives who make more than them:

The cartoon summarizes the article nicely – it’s fine for women to make more as long as it doesn’t cause them to slack off in other domains and expect men to pitch in on “domestic responsibilities.”

I guess this is what sexism used to look like (before it looked like this and this and this and this and this):

These Folgers commercials are doozies:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VprIbx4QkPc[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnjjkgIO3Ck[/youtube]

Thanks David P. for sending us both the ad, found here, and the commercial!

* I stole the title of this post from HeatherShow.

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.

This is a doll Mattel put out as part of the Barbie line a few years ago. Her name is Midge. Apparently she is Barbie’s long-time friend. If you notice, Midge is pregnant. Her belly opened up and there was a baby inside. The line Midge is part of is called Happy Family.

This is Alan, Midge’s husband, and Ryan, their son. Midge and Alan were married in 1991, according to Mattel.

This is the whole Happy Family line–Alan and Ryan, Midge and baby, and grandparents.

The pregnant Midge doll was quickly pulled from the market because of protests that Midge might be interpreted as a single mother. Mattel argued that Midge and Alan had been married for years, but conservative groups argued that since she was sold separately, girls could get the wrong message and think she wasn’t married.

This ad “liberates” women from the kitchen through technology and capitalism… but not, alas, through true partnerships with men. Women should spend less time cooking, but it’s still HER job.

Oh, also, the reason women haven’t achieved greatness in the United States is because she’s too busy to be bothered. It has absolutely nothing to do with sexism and institutional constraints.

Thanks to Julie C!

This ad, from the 1970s (I think), has the exact same message:  “For women with more exciting things to do than scrub floors: ‘One-step floor care.'”  Congratulations women, now you can scrub floors faster… but don’t think you can get out of scrubbing floors.

Found at Vintage Ads.

And this one, from the 1950s (I think) is extra creepy (found here).  Like the other ads, it replaces “women’s work” with a technological solution.  And that solution a gift from her husband.  The text:

The one gift that quietly ends garbage ‘trudgery’ — frees the little woman from disagreeable trips to the garbage can… She’ll thank you every time she uses it…