The little germ piñatas have struck once more and this weekend I found myself cosying up to the porcelain headrest at three in the morning - again. By Sunday afternoon I'd mostly recovered but, having been up all night, I decided to take Monday off from work to make sure I was well and truly clear of the nasty and to recover a bit. Most of the day was spent sleeping. Some of it was spent surfing the internet and catching up on stuff I haven't caught up on in ages. Like the Hamish and Andy show.
Unfortunately watching H & A vids off their website was not quite the pleasant experience I'd hoped for. Anyone that listens to their show knows that their sponsor is McDonalds. So every two minute vid of the boys begins with an ad for McDonalds - in this instance spruiking their "family dinner box". Aside from having to watch this stupid ad so many times that I know I'll be dreaming about it, something else was bugging me. And after about the eighth viewing it hit me - it's their concluder line at the end.
"Grab dinner at McDonalds and give Mum the night off."
Here's an ad that shows an older couple and a younger couple sitting around the dinner table and enjoying a meal. I presume this is Mum, Dad and the kids or Mum, Dad and kid + partner. Since they're all adults, why is it that by buying dinner they're giving Mum the night off? Why can't they just say "Grab dinner at McDonalds and have a night off"?
One of the Mysteries of the Domestic Sphere has always been why I am apparently the mistress of all things domestic. My husband is 31. He has a wife and two children. His IQ is in the genius range. He has an amazingly complicated job with a bunch of people who look to him for direction on a daily basis. He manages that job, and all those people, without a second thought. So why, when it's the weekend and we're about to do the housework, does he turn to me and ask me what I want him to do? Surely that's obvious? You're a grown up. You can see what needs to be done as well as I can. Just grab something and work with it.
It's something that really eats at me because we're meant to be a partnership. We were married seven years ago but I'm fairly confident that the vows we said were equal. There was nothing in there about, "Do you, Rebecca, take Charles and solemnly swear to direct him in the management of your joint household until death do you part?" I probably would have had something to say about that.
And tonight as I watched this ridiculously vapid little ad I realised how insidious advertising is. It's like the feminist movement never happened. Flick a channel and here's Mum cleaning the kitchen. Now here's "Dr Mum" administering cough syrup. Mum serving up lamb roast. Mum taking a kid with a cold to soccer. Mum, mum, mum. Where's Dad? He's smiling at mum over the gear stick in their brand new four wheel drive as two exceptionally cute and well-behaved kids beam from the back seat. Now here he is shaking the hand of a real estate agent while Mum stands slightly behind him smiling benevolently. Ooo and here he is again talking about how he arranged life insurance to look after his family when he's gone. It's no wonder Charles is first to climb into the driving seat and last to vacuum the house.
The thing is that these ads cheapen the role of men as much as they do women. Check out the Nurofen ad where Dad Andrew Daddo delivers the line, "Dad-proof" to describe the level of dumbness required to administer Nurofen pain medication to a tot. Forget that men run most of the world - they're clearly too stupid to measure out five mls of syrup because everyone knows that's a woman's job and they're so brilliant at it.
Rest assured people that my husband is every bit as involved as I am with the kids and he is absolutely capable of doing everything I can do in that department*. I consider myself very fortunate that his love for them has meant his involvement surpasses that dictated by societal roles established and maintained through the background noise of advertising.
I've never really considered myself to be a feminist because, like a lot of people, my mental image of a feminist is a stereotypical militant man-hater. But when I think about what that term means, I realise that I am a feminist. I choose to define my feminism as supporting the movement towards a society that accepts whatever role a man or woman chooses to have in their lives. I truly believe that a large part of achieving that acceptance will involve the depiction of men and women playing similar roles in advertising and media in general.
Finally I should say that while we don't yet see a man in jeans nursing a baby a few feet behind his business suit-clad wife as she shakes the hand of a real estate agent, there are signs of improvement. There are ads that show Dads changing nappies (thanks Huggies) and Dads tenderly nursing sick children (Panadol). Unfortunately I keep going back to that image of four grown-ups sitting around the table sharing a McDonald's meal...giving "Mum" the night off.
* Well...probably not the breast feeding part. Okay - definitely not.
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