Let me show you a TV ad and you tell me what you get out of it…
You don’t have to know Serbian to understand that this poor mother had to go with a kid to the cinema in spite of being sick. Instead of laying down a day or two for being sick, she gets to buy herself a medicine and go pretend she’s fine.
Call me biased and you’ll be right. Triggered much? Oh yes I am. Being a mother, I know how much we sacrifice for kids, while others get away with it. The huge weight of “being a good mom” is being put on a little girls’ back since the day they start walking and talking and it’s time for a first toy: BABY DOLL. We all love our toys so much, god forsake something happens to them or they get lost, we’d go out of our minds. Well, that scenario actually happened to me when I was five. I had my little bald baby doll named Tanja and I took her everywhere with me. All up until one day, when I left it behind in my aunt’s backyard… Careless mother me woke up that morning looking for her baby doll, but it seemed like she vanished. I asked all my cousins, nobody saw it. That whole day has passed, no sign of Tanja. I started to get really worried. My aunt asked me to go in the pantry and bring some food from there and just when I opened the door, my heart dropped to my feet: there was Tanja laying on a shelf, completely massacred! Both legs hanging on a strand, eyes missing, head beaten, I almost fainted when I saw it. Turns out a crazy dog got Tanja during the night and did what he did on her, so my aunt hid her so I don’t get sad. Go figure. Back to the point: I am in my forties and I still remember not the sadness for Tanja being massacred, but the amount of responsibility and guilt I felt for leaving the doll behind in the yard. It was not about a toy, she was a living thing for me. And that responsibility and guilt is what shapes us into being good mothers, right? Right?
Wrong.
That weight of girls playing with dolls and boys playing with cars teaches us that children are responsibility only of their mothers. No they are not. Legally, emotionally, financially, developmentally, mindfully… they are EQUAL responsibility of both parents. Kudos to all single parents here, please, don’t take this to the heart, you are true heroes for doing it alone, but when we have a family with a mother and a father (being married or not, it’s not relevant), it is extremely important that mother does not buy cough syrup to go to the cinema with her child, but stay in bed and have a rest, like any other human being should do.
But hey, advertisers have not thought of this, right? No harm intended on purpose, they reluctantly oversaw this, right? Well it’s really enough. Ads are seen by millions of people being freely aired into TV space, youtube, games… they are everywhere. They shape the culture. They shape the expectations. I am pretty sure that some men who see this ad would think it’s completely normal for their wives to do the chores while being sick. What’s even worse- women seing this ad would think it’s their responsibility to make things work while being sick. No it’s not.
Subconsciously, this ad is putting additional pressure on women who are already overwhelmed with holding housholds from falling apart. Women already do two and a half times more of unpaid household and care work than men (source UN Women link), so who has right to send devious messages that they are expected to do even more than they are already doing? No one.
So, brands and ad agencies, you need to think more. I am very much aware that the harm here was not done on purpose, but that’t not an excuse. No more pushing women off the cliff and putting additional irrational weight on their back, because do remember that the girls are watching your ads and trust me- you don’t want to piss them off. Younger generations are not buying all the stuff that you serve them because they are simply not hungry. Long gone are the days when we had 10 ads on TV during the break, now kids see ads everywhere they go. Unfortunately for them, their brains are overstimulated and their scanner for BS is way more sensitive than ours used to be. They simply won’t tolerate that nonsense and therefore, you should know better. And do better. You owe it to the girls.