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It is, apparently, a particularly dirty fork. It is not just dirty, but dirty and compelling-attracting the attention of both the woman and her young daughter. "I hate left-overs!" declares the woman. "Yuck!" adds the daughter. Then the male voiceover for Dual Action Electrasol speaks, and we learn that with Electrasol the woman's problems will be solved. In fact, that same fork, now clean, powerfully draws mother and daughter back into the kitchen. The daughter triumphantly holds the fork and exclaims, "Hey! No more leftovers!"
It is an unimaginative television ad at best, one created years ago by Toronto-based Bates Canada and being rerun now to promote the Reckitt-Benckiser-owned brand (whose current agency is MacLaren McCann, also of Toronto). It is an ad, however, that illustrates what still plagues many advertisements for cleaning products: the notion that women are obsessed with dirt, or the notion that if anyone was to be obsessed with dirt, it would be a woman. The Electrasol ad is notable because it shows not one, but two generations, suggesting that either the mother is training her daughter to worry about dirt, or this worry is innate in all females, manifesting itself even at a young age.
While some advertisers are making attempts to portray men in more domestic roles, the fact that, in the 21st century, we are still seeing advertisements that continue to primarily target women as the cleaners and the caretakers (think "doctor Mom") says little about how hard women and men, although women in particular, have worked to break down these stereotypes. And, although historically pigeonholing women in the "homemaker" role was a hot button for those angry about how women are portrayed in the media, it has become a lesser evil, explains Melanie Cishecki, executive director for MediaWatch, a Toronto-based organization that works to improve the portrayal of women and girls in the media. There are now, after all, other serious issues to contend with.
"Advertisers have made some changes in that kind of (domestic) portrayal of women," Cishecki notes. "Now, it may be a question of there being other issues that have emerged that seem to be more pressing in the public mind like violence, like sexualization of women, like the body image issue."
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