"Choosy moms choose JIF," and Dove chocolate, and Yoplait yogurt...

Advertisements reflect and perpetuate our needs and wants as well as the things we “do.” If people want shiny new Lexus SUVs or Folgers coffee, advertisements proliferate to reflect the things we demand and to encourage us to buy more. Advertisements are also reflections of the things we “do,” such as gender. “Doing gender” is defined as the process of performing and fulfilling a gender role as constituted by “socially constructed and maintained” expectations and guidelines (Lorber 12). In the case of advertisements, especially those promoting food items, women are often times portrayed in particular roles—usually as a mother or wife who chooses and serves particular foods to her family, or as a woman who chooses certain brands of foods in order to stay slim and attractive. Thus advertisements target certain audiences to encourage sales and consumption by using perspectives that appeal to that particular audience, while also perpetuating the association between the product and its targeted buyers.

            Take, for instance, Dove chocolate. This product is targeted exclusively to women. Commercial advertisements for this product typically involve a woman who is consumed in the indulgence of Dove chocolate after one bite—and the commercials always end with “My moment. My Dove.” And indulgence is the point exactly; we’re supposed to indulge in the guilt-ridden chocolate after a long hard day of being a woman. In a recent commercial, the narrator says, “We’re only human, but we try to be perfect. We pretend that high heels are comfortable, and that waxing just takes getting used to.”

So, since it sucks to wear high heels and wax our legs, we women should eat chocolate. Because we’re “only human.” But humans include men, and I do not see any men in these commercials. Surely there are men out there that like chocolate. But in society, chocolate is a woman’s thing. Another product targeted almost exclusively to women is Yoplait yogurt. The particular commercial I’m including here illustrates the point that women should be weight-obsessed and conscious of the foods we eat because we might get fat. And that’s just terrible. The woman chews her lip while contemplating the punishment for her indulgence—she could “jog in place as [she] eats it,” or she can follow the slice of cheesecake with “celery sticks, [because] they would cancel each other out.”

 In fact, this commercial has recently been pulled off the air by Yoplait because of claims that it promotes eating disorders. But print advertisements by Yoplait encourage a similar “indulgence.”

Here, women-who-crave-midnight-snacks, indulge in Yoplait yogurt because it’s only 100 calories, and therefore guilt-free. Enjoy.

However, targeting women’s weight obsession with guilt-free products is not only a modern occurrence. Although the following advertisement operates under different gender expectations from the mid-20^th century, it is not difficult to make the connection between society’s expectations for a woman’s body with products that allow for a little indulgence while still keeping a woman slim and attractive. Perhaps there were more overt expectations for women to catch and keep a man partly with her attractive figure during this time period, but I do not think it is far-fetched to come to a similar conclusion with the above-mentioned advertisements. After all, someone is looking at the body that is kept thin by Yoplait yogurt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=113mRmchumY&NR=1

Another aspect of advertising that promotes and perpetuates “doing gender” is the role of being a mother, a mother that provides food for her family. Marjorie DeVault points out that “feeding work has become one of the primary ways that women ‘do’ gender,” by pleasing her children and her husband with choosing and preparing foods that show how much she cares (118). An advertisement I am sure many of us are familiar with is JIF peanut butter. “Choosy moms choose JIF,” right? Granted, not every JIF commercial shows women serving JIF peanut butter sandwiches to her husband and kids, but every commercial has the tagline, “choosing JIF is a simple way to show someone how much you care. Choosy moms choose JIF.” Even if you watch the commercial with the little girl and her dad building a tree house together, you get the same tagline—mom does the grocery shopping, and she chooses JIF, so she cares about us.

And this print advertisement for JIF peanut butter insinuates that although “being a mom doesn’t come with instructions,” choosing JIF means a mom who gives her family this peanut butter is a choosy mom, and a caring mom.

Other advertisements that exemplify this notion occur in mid-20^th century print advertisements from LIFE magazine. As grocery-shopper and provider of meals, advertisements, such as this one for Libby’s pumpkin pie filling, target women and claim to ensure her man’s satisfaction with her pie-making if she uses this product. It is understandable how appealing many advertisements like this were with taglines such as, “it’s so easy now to thrill your pie-guy with a flaky-crusted, melt-in-the-mouth ‘punkin’!” when baking pies and cakes was “universally recognized as a triumph of love as much as a skill” (Shapiro 31).

  

http://books.google.com/books?id=YkoEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA35&dq=Life%20magazine%20november%2015%2C%201948&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q=Life%20magazine%20november%2015,%201948&f=false

Although modern-day food advertisements are not necessarily as blatant with depictions of gender roles as advertisements from the mid-20^th century, it is still a valid argument to view “feeding as a ‘gendered activity,’” particularly a womanly one (DeVault 117). Advertisements become effective “resources for the production [and reproduction] of gender” in regards to food selection and production when they aim for specific audiences as Dove chocolate and Yoplait yogurt do (118). Even though I specifically focused on women in this post, it is important to recognize that food-related advertisements do not only target women; there are many male-oriented food advertisements, such as Hillshire Farm meats (Go meat!).

Thus advertisements provide us with resources to understand how people “do gender” with societal roles and expectations that are embedded in the very pictures and commercials that reflect our wants and needs.

Works Cited

DeVault, Marjorie L. Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. 95-119.

Lorber, Judith. Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Shapiro, Laura. “‘I Guarantee’: Betty Crocker and the Woman in the Kitchen.” Avakian, Arlene Voski and Barbara Haber, eds. From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. 29-40.

In the words of one man while pointing at a woman, "Me man, you cook."

I like to cook, and I like to eat—not necessarily in that order. And I did not necessarily learn it from my mother, either. Growing up, I have had many people provide meals for me, and they have not all been women. While visiting my Dad and Mimi and Pawpaw for whole summers in my childhood, my Pawpaw did most of the cooking for our family mealtimes. The recipes have come to be known as “Pawpaw’s”—“Pawpaw’s pork chops and gravy,” “Pawpaw’s candied yams,” or “Pawpaw’s chocolate Texas cake.” Mimi can also cook though—she makes some mean steamed broccoli—but the kitchen is well known as Pawpaw’s territory. It is interesting that I most clearly associate homemade meals with my Pawpaw, a man, when Marjorie L. DeVault points out in her chapter on “Feeding as ‘Women’s Work’” that the responsibility of providing meals for others is typically a woman’s job. DeVault notes that “women are recruited into the work of care,” specifically in regards to cooking for and feeding their families, by social expectations that organize the proper labor divide for each gender in the household (96). And although there are obvious exceptions, such as my Pawpaw, I tend to agree that cooking and feeding are tasks typically allocated to women because, in the words of some of DeVault’s subjects, “someone has to do it” (109).

This typical responsibility of women, however, does not have to be such a shouldered burden or an unhappy obligation. One thing DeVault does not acknowledge is the opportunity for control and creative expression that is to be found in cooking. In this day and age when it is so easy and convenient to buy a ninety-nine cents hamburger flipped by a teenager or a frozen bag of T.G.I. Friday’s loaded potato skins from the Wal-mart freezer, it is exciting and ego-boosting to know that I have cooked a meal with my own hands, have made it taste the way I want it to, and have arranged it on the plate the way I like it. Usually when my boyfriend and I are together, I do the cooking, mainly because I like to cook, experiment with new recipes, and present something to him to have him say, “Wow! This corn on the cob is perfect!” It is a matter of pride to have my cooking creation praised and liked—not just by my boyfriend, but anyone (he just tends to be around for most of my experiments and creations). And of course, I cook a lot for him to show him I care about him. DeVault points out the “strong association between ‘mothering’ and the preparation of food” as the foundation for the notion of showing how much a woman cares about others by cooking and serving food to them (104). The practice of mothering that is unique to women (even if they are not mothers yet) becomes a vehicle through which a woman expresses her caring for her children by providing them with cooked food. However, I think this notion is only an offshoot of the overarching expectation of society-instituted gender roles; a woman cooks and provides meals for her children, husband, boyfriend, etc. because it signifies her as “recognizably womanly” (118).

Although cooking and feeding may “seem like [a] ‘natural’ expression of [my] gender,” I refuse to feel obligated to cook and feed anyone just because society tells me it is my “job” or “duty” (118). I like to cook, not because I am expected to, but because I like to control what food I put into my body and because I like to experiment and be creative with food. I will cook because I enjoy it, but I do not have to cook. And it does not make me any less “womanly.” If that were the case, my boyfriend can cook the meal, and I will uncork the wine and watch.

DeVault, Marjorie L. Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. 95-119.