You’ve seen the Clorox Disinfecting Wipes commercial, as I did again the other day. An attractive thirtysomething woman in exercise sweats drops her tote on the counter, announces “I’m home,” and turns into the kitchen to find… her husband changing the baby’s diaper on the inlaid wood countertop! Whatta maroon, amirite? Garsh, all women have probably been through something like that! Whew, it’s like having to raise two kids at the same dang time.
(Clorox has another ad which reuses the exact same shots of the woman, but when the camera turns to her husband, he’s scaling a fresh-caught flounder on the counter, bits of blood and flesh scattering wildly. You decide which is worse on your food prep surfaces: human poop or animal blood.)
When this ad ran during my evening headlines this week, my mind flashed to an essay a friend shared several months ago, an op-ed from a British tabloid website, entitled “Male incompetence is a subtle form of misogyny.” Author Miranda Larbi makes a persuasive case that men who plead incompetence in household affairs are engaged in a passive-aggressive form of male dominance. When male incompetence resembles Larbi’s description, I agree with her argument.
But I’ve also noticed the prevalence of male incompetence as a cultural trope. It’s especially noticeable in fifteen- and thirty-second commercials, where the entire arc turns around one exchange. But once we’re aware of it, we find it more subtly integrated into most mass media, especially television, where the highly competent man suddenly becoming all thumbs when confronted with domestic responsibilities, is played for everything from pathos to cheap laughs.
The issue, whether for opponents like Miranda Larbi or profiteers like the AKQA media agency (responsible for the Clorox ads), seems substantially confined to the kitchen. The cultural current just expects men to demonstrate complete fumbling incompetence wherever food is prepared. Notice that the man’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t take responsibility for household chores; he cheerfully raises babies and prepares dinner. He just does so in ways that bring bathroom or garage functions into proximity with food preparation.
Again, the advertising environment seems a place where this thrives. The very short medium creates a sort of morality play in which men, often believing themselves highly competent, go full Dunning-Kruger on domesticity. Cascade, the dishwashing detergent company, has run entire campaigns around this theme:
This isn’t even my favorite ad from this campaign. My favorite, starring Mad Men veteran Sadie Alexandru, features a man enthusiastically scraping food residue off freshly washed dishes, while his wife makes a face combining disgust with “I want a divorce.” Sadly, this one appears no longer available on YouTube.
Critics will respond by pointing out that TV commercials aren’t reality, and aren’t instruction manuals for daily responsibilities. I agree. These are examples of low comedy played for broad laughs in an environment where the fifteen-second limit basically forbids deeper examination of themes. Commercials will always fall back on broad stereotypes taken from the larger culture.
But that means these stereotypes already exist. A full panoply of male boilerplates, from skilled professionals to manful outdoorsy types to ridiculous hipsters, is expected to turn stupid and borderline dangerous when entering the kitchen. Doofus behavior has become the default position for men in the food-preparation domain. Dudes like me are just waiting for women to bail us out.
Even the opposite of this position reduced men to one stereotyped position. Actor Tim Daly plays the husband of the Secretary of State on TV’s Madam Secretary. His character is a former CIA operative who, by the fourth season, is promoted to head of the CIA’s clandestine affairs division. Yet, interviewed on NPR, Daly reported that most of his fan mail, especially from men, has focused on his competence in the kitchen. His defining character trait, singular, is his ability to cook.
The pervasive expectation that men will be incompetent around food preparation encourages both sexes to conform to their preconceived notions. There might even be something anti-patriarchy to giving women a domain exclusively their own. Women face no glass ceiling in the kitchen, no male privilege, no lopsided competition where their confidence gets deemed “bossy.” Women can be women in the kitchen.
Yet expecting women to perennially rescue men from our own incompetence doesn’t just marginalize women. It permits, even encourages, men to not think beyond themselves. When male incompetence is so pervasive that advertisers play it for low comedy, that proves both women and men need to break our chains.
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