Every Women Has A Fantasy

This Fantasy is the perfume "Fantasy" By Brittany Spears

"Once upon a time, there was a goddess and a hunter,

She was beautiful and he couldn't help himself,

so he did something kind of crazy,

(Close up of the arrow he shoots at her, labelled "Magic Love Arrow")

(After shooting her, Brittany continues)

And they live happily ever after,

Fantasy, Everybody has one"

I too wanted to step away from the mundane cleaning products.
This commercial is short, and probably cost way more than it was worth, but that is beside the point.
The point is, the women (Brittany) is running from a man. She is in a magical forest, like the fairytale princesses we read about as children. The reason she is running, is to be shot, literally, in the back by the man. That is how her fantasy turns out. Her romantic notion is fulfilled by a man shooting her in the back with a suction cupped arrow, so they can be together. It is a wonder that little girls or even teens, see romance in another light.
The man catching the women makes her his pray. The prey is the submissive partner in that game, which can be said for a women's role in life. To be submissive to those around her.
This also takes on the element of the forbidden fruit, similar in the Nina Ricci Perfume commercial. These women are in a forest or by the tree that Eve took the forbidden apple, thereby tempting men into sin. Brittany, in her commercial can also be seen as the seductress who lures the man into doing something "crazy", but in the end his violent act is accepted because he now holds his power over her, keeping her in her rightful place.
And who can forget the parting line, "and they live happily ever after..." just like in fairytales. But realistically, who is living happily? The women or the man?

~ Rosebud

The Perfect Family

 In this febreze commercial we see the perfect housewife and perfect family being portrayed. The house wife is a young put-together woman, hair and makeup flawless. It seems this woman has achieved the stereotypical aspiration all woman should have (as encouraged by corporate consumer culture), or the "all american" dream. The perfect husband, two children (girl AND boy) as well a dog. The little girl and boy are both "socially correct" girl wearing a pink dress, and boy a blue plaid button up. By the looks of the house, their clothes and the items and furniture inside, we can assume this family to be of upper middle class (a common pattern seen in most cleaning ads).

In this commercial it seems the mother or mother in law is coming for a visit. The wife here is encouraged to have the house smelling clean and fresh before she arrives, it shows specifically the wife spraying the febreze all over her home, because it is a womens job to clean and use the household products.

The house is spotless and smelling fresh when she arrives, and it seems grandma approves. The wife is now seen and reinforced as "the perfect housewife".

-Meryle Girl

Fall in "furniture" love

Before wrapping up this blogging assignment, I wanted to post this furniture advertisement which I feel ties in perfectly with our discussion topic: romance. The way romance is used here is pretty similar to the way it is used in any other type of ad whether it be household good or food item: the woman is seen as fulfilled and complete because the item that is being sold to her satisfies her psychological need to feel loved. In the photo above the elegant angel has fallen in love with the "perfect" couch. The ad then prompts other women to come fall in love with their ideal piece of furniture, suggesting they cannot truly be happy without it. This then lingers on a very important concept about life that exists within our society: falling in love is seen as the climax! As humans we are taught to believe that our sole purpose is to find a mate that we can unconditionally love for the rest of our lives. We are to marry this person, buy a home with this person, start a family with this person. Therefore it is not so shocking that companies fully tap into this anxiety that people have, more so women,  when it comes to falling in love. Companies want to make the consumers believe that just like finding a soul mate, buying the right products will satisfy our 'need' to fall in love and be loved. Both however are social constructions. Am I wrong?
Cheers
The Veiled Interpreter

Say Cheese

I'll bet you didn't see this one coming...

I wanted to try to move away from cleaning products for a moment to look at a different type of household ad - the camera.
       For starters, a digital camera is a luxury for most, and so these ads are clearly more marketed to a middle-upper class. What is clearly so fascinating about these recent Canon ads is how they too have fallen victim to incorporating romance and sexuality in order to appeal to their audiences - a majority which I will assume are women, and here is why. In accordance with the idea that women are to be the ones who do the cooking, cleaning, nurturing of the children and so forth, it would make sense that a camera is also seen as a 'female household product'. A camera enables a woman to record her family memories so that she may then scrap-book them or print them out to frame around the home. I don't find it so shocking that companies have cleverly tapped into the use of romance in these advertisements in order to target the female psyche!
     These are my thoughts on the manner, so allow me to rant for a minute. Romance is seen as an "escape" element for many women, as Hollows puts it women seek romance to fulfill "their psychological needs, needs which are produced by patriarchy but aren't satisfied within patriarchal institutions" (Hollows 81). To continue romance almost seems to exist as a fantasy that some women need in order to be released from the oppression they feel existing within a patriarchal world. Therefore the ideal romance offers a woman the opportunity to feel nurtured, and to allow for the integration of her inner self. Advertising companies feed off these understandings in order to sell products directly to women. These camera ads attempt to sell the idea of the "perfect man"; the genuine, caring, mature, loving man that supposedly every woman longs for... or in this case the "perfect camera". So it would appear to me that the relationship between women and romance is a viscous circular pattern:

1. We (as in women in general) are oppressed by patriarchy because it creates a serious division of inequality
2. We are then bombarded with advertisements that force us to believe that we actually can be with a man (sticking to heternormative standards here) that will cherish us and allow us to be equal to him
3. We then buy mass amounts of household products that sell us this belief in order to fulfill our psychological fantasies, which do not actually exist in patriarchal reality anyways? WHAT!

     Thus romance exists merely for the exploitation of females in a patriarchal dominated world. Wouldn't you agree? My point here is not to reject the idea that romantic fantasy cannot be enjoyable and rejuvenating, but that women truly need to be aware of the honest intentions behind these ads.
Cheers
The Veiled Interpreter        

Feedback on Week 1 (Posts and Comments from Nov. 1-7)

Hey Counter-Culture blog!

There is some really great analysis here of how gender socialization domesticates women. You will need to make sure that you connect those ideas back to the assignment question about romance: how romantic tropes are used to sell things [review the Hollows chapter on Romantic Fiction carefully, she very carefully lays them out for you], and keep women in a subordinate social position. A great example of the analysis of romance appears in these ads as an ideological mechanism takes place in Goldilocks' response to "A Difficult Marriage" - if you're not sure about what the question asks you to do, have a look at that to see how s/he connects the ad to broader social structures. Make sure that the very good analysis your doing already gets directed to the assignment question.

The Doctor

The POWER of pine-sol:

It’s unreal how women are portrayed in cleaning commercials, and I can see from a lot of the other posts that other people have noticed the same things. When researching this topic, I remembered how I used to see all sorts of pine-sol commercials when I was younger, and knowing what I know now, and thinking back at the discussions we’ve had in class, it’s weird how I can now notice how ridiculous these commercials are, and how in most of them, it’s almost always the women cleaning.

In this one, it shows how wonderful a woman feels about cleaning their toilets and showers, and how they seemed to be so pleased about how much happier their life, with their families will be if they all chip in. The thing is, and as it is stated in the commercial, the wife gets the wonderful duty of cleaning the toilet and everything else that no one else in the house wants to touch. :) they are just SO happy.

In this cleaning product commercial, women are cleaning the household, and yet the men are cleaning the cars, and motorcycles. It definitely shows how gender in stereotyped and how things are labelled either masculine or feminine. 

With all that said, i do have to say how nice it is to see that some commercials are actually changing it up and showing men doing something rather than coming in from a long day at work, or watching their wives clean, this video shows just how caring and compassionate husbands can be to their wives after a long day.... NOT!:

 

-tm- blogger

Romance in Dish Soap Ads

Romancing the roles of women in household products like dish washing soap is something that has been around for a while. I found both older advertisements and current advertisement that target women and reinforce their 'place in the home'. Household product companies work hard to incorporate the romancing of women's roles in their advertisements.

The romancing technique in advertisements can be used as kind of the underlying message and it takes a trained eye to pick it out. Here is my first advertisement under critical analysis:

Here it's it obvious the company is using romance to let them women know they should be the dishwashers. The ads uses a pink bottle of dish soap and advertises the special 'rose petal' ingredient that is for her hands. The hands in the ad are obviously a woman's. They are made out to look so smooth, skinny and delicate. She has manicured nails with a shiny pink nail polish. Each hand is holding onto a rose very gently. Roses are a symbol for romance and that seems to by why the company chose to use this particular flower. They advertise the soap as having rose extract to make a woman's delicate hands smoother after washing all the dishes. These typical dishwashing soap ads have chosen to use 'the smoothing' as a selling technique because women are supposed to have soft hands. Women are supposed to care about their skin and look good for their men when they come home at the end of the day. Think about the typical soap operas that show women cooking and cleaning for their husbands. After they make dinner, they must clean up too. But most importantly they must look good while (and after) doing this. Smooth hands are what a women needs to impress her husband and keep him happy. While doing the dishes she must look good like the women shown in the ad. The 'miracle' rose infused dish soap is going to make women feel so good while doing the dishes. She gets a little bit of suds on her lower arm and holds the dirty dishes so delicately so she can impress her husband while cleaning. But after she is done cleaning she has to come out with nice clean, soft, smooth hands. It looks like she will have nice hands to massage her husband after his long day at work. These ridiculous ads remind women their place is in the home. The softener in the soap allows women to keep her skin looking young and please her husband by looking pretty and fresh. It reminds women that they are the dishwashers and they belong in the home.  Advertising companies restrict women abilities to be recognizes as just ones in the home (dishwasher, launderer, cooker, etc).  Dishwashing is made to look like a womsn's job and a woman's job only. But, being a dishwasher also requires you to be a 'sexy woman' while doing them. This particular ad is suggesting you use roses to scrub the dishes instead of a sponge because its 'sexier'. Household product companies tell women they have to look good while they wash, make it a sensual sense and use nice scents and flowers in the process. Women have to make themselves sexually attractive objects. Soft (white skin) hands are beautiful, and beauty is a huge part of being the 'romantic' women men supposedly want. There is nothing 'manly' in this ad that suggests this dishwashing job could be done by a man too.

I also found a more recent advertisement that came from a magazine. This one also reminds women that doing the dishes is a women's job. 

"Send your hands to a spa without leaving the kitchen". The quote at the top of the ads is obviously reminding a women that their place is in the kitchen. Again, we know this ad is directed at women through the use of the hand cut out. It's a silhouette of a women hand; skinny fingers, small wrist and long nails. Inside the hand we see a beautiful scene, the same one we often seen advertised as a 'romantic getaway' (commonly advertised to be taken with your heterosexual husband/boyfirend). Women must purchase this dish soap in order to feel like they are on this romantic getaway. The description at the bottom also includes a few key techniques used to remind women of their place in the home. Not leaving the kitchen to get this feeling- tells women they belong in the kitchen and to stay there. The unique protein improving look and feel of hands- tells women they have to be 'beautiful' to be a real woman. Women need to have soft and silty skin to be a real woman. Thats the beauty of it- using worlds like 'beauty' remind women they have to look beautiful while doing the dishes (and after). Calling dishwashing a beautiful act is reminding women that this is the job for them. Romance has created a ideal women type, and she must be beautiful. Beauty is an important part of romance and women must stay young and look pretty in order to be happy. That happy feeling you can get from being on a romantic getaway is achievable to women by only doing the dished with dawn soap. Dishwashing has been portrayed as a women's job through the use of advertising. Many ads convince women that is is only a job for women, men aren't present in most ads (they are off at work while the woman is at home cleaning). Women need to use specific types of dishwashing soap so that their skin can look younger and fresh. Many soap operas leave women dreaming about that vacation that one day they will get to go on, and this advertising company is telling them they don't have to dream anymore, you can get that vacation feeling from our soap! While the women is at home washing the dishes, her husband is off making the money. That might mean that that vacation dream is only really achievable by men (who have the money to pay for the trip). A women dosen't have the ability to purchase that vacation for herself, so she stays home and has to wash the dishes to get that 'feeling' from her dish soap. That is the best she can do (pathetic). 

Both of these ads remind women their place is in the home and achievable by being a romantic women (sexy, pretty, gentle, etc). All these romantic characteristic are used by advertising companies to trick women into believing all of this, and to get them to use/buy their products. This portrayal of women results in the gender roles placed on women and the stereotypical role to stay in the home. The use of this theme is used by all sorts of media and advertising companies. The same message is being repeated to women so many time that it has resulted in them (often) believing it. They have been restricted to the home. 

I found other ads that have very similar themes and messages. Take a look:

-romantic theme of women trying to beautify herself

-emotional women caring so much about the dishes

-women showing a bit of leg in the back ground hugging her man (because she didn't use sunlight her man left her and went to another women)

-pink outfit, dressed to impress, jewel, long hair, pretty romantic looking

In the home is not where I want to spend all my time!

-Goldilocks