Anyone who has ever taken a class with me knows that I am obsessed with studying commercials. There is one genre in particular that has caught my attention lately - air freshener commercials.
These 30-second works of commercial art capitalize on the pressure women *should* feel to maintain the perfect, clean, "fresh-smelling" abode. To not do so invites a whole host of unpleasant responses, from wrinkled noses to guests who literally faint when they get a whiff of all those "house smells" you couldn't be bothered to cover.
Particularly innocuous are the candle air freshener commercials. One specific example is the woman whose girlfriends come over and comment on how good it smells, asking if the plate of gingerbread cookies are fresh baked. The woman indicates that they are indeed freshly baked, but a pesky gingerbread man comes alive and informs us that she's lying and it is actually the air freshening candle sitting right there on the counter that is producing the heavenly aroma. The woman responds by quickly grabbing the offending tattletale cookie and biting his head off. She then offers the plate of (obviously store-bought) cookies to her guests, asking "cookie?" around a mouthfull of gingerbread man, to which her friends respond with uneasy looks and awkward body language.
If this is not a rich site for analysis of normative gender roles (especially for white women) enacted in consumer media, I don't know what is. The guilt, the lying, the shame of not having a fresh-smelling house or of not having actually baked gingerbread cookies.
As a sticker on the esteemed Dr. Wu's office door appropriately declares, "I'll be a post-feminist in post-patriarchy."
For some reason, the Glade commercials are driving me nuts right now. Specifically, the one where she admits that it's a candle, rather than fresh baked goods, but has to say that it's from France, instead of Glade.
ReplyDeleteI guess this is the next step in those commercials. No one even asks if she's baking--her "shame" is in finding an affordable candle, rather than importing it from Europe...
cgb
I have been noticing the European fetishization so much more lately. For instance, so many beauty products are peddled by fierce looking women with Australian or British accents. They have to have the discriminating foreign judge on all the reality TV shows. Even dishwasher detergent is glamorized by the European voice.
ReplyDeleteBut we're proud to be Americans.