House of Eratosthenes

There is a certain high-quality grocery chain that has earned my respect as a successful business, that has recently engaged in a marketing campaign I find to be detestable:

It’s A Mom’s World.

Hey, I’ll give ’em their due. A kid missing a mother will be worse off, in many ways, than a kid missing a father. And Moms do a lot of work that just has ta get done. They get very little credit for this 364 days out of the year.

No, the reason I find this to be so reprehensible is because of its cyclical nature. Why did we need a feminist movement in the first place? Because of a shitty prevailing attitude that hey, I’m a man, I do my man stuff, it’s a man’s world and nobody else anywhere is contributing anything to it that really matters. My wife is nothing more than a bedroom plaything, my house cleans itself, and in my office the files all arrange themselves auto-magically and I know how to look up a phone number — I holler at my secretary that she should get it for me.

Now look what we have going on here. Mom’s world. What’s that say? Exactly what was said at the beginning of the exercise…I’m the only one doing anything worth doing. Same bullshit attitude, but the roles have been switched.

That is not what was supposed to happen.

My gal had some fun with this. She was picking up a flank of fish over at the seafood counter, and asked the manager “My boyfriend says since it’s a mom’s world, if I send him here on the way home to pick something up, maybe he shouldn’t come because you guys won’t let him in.” Naturally, the manager laughed it off and clarified that I was welcome anytime. He’s probably a decent joe. I don’t think the spirit of my complaint was properly conveyed, though.

When I see these guys wandering the ethnic spices aisle or the dry foods aisle or the canned juices aisle, with all that uncertainty…tiny footsteps…you know that walk of despair I’m talking about, right? And then whip out the cell phone to get hold of these last-minute instructions — what exactly is “couscous,” anyway? — it about makes me sick.

You can tell there’s no “please” coming from the other end. There’s no “thank you.” Why would there be? She’s making stuff he’s going to eat. He’s doing a household chore he’s expected to do, and she’s telling him how.

Exactly the way you treat a little kid.

I realize the dynamic is unavoidable, anytime you have a specialist doing the actual work and someone else, who doesn’t know the subject matter as well, helping. But this naturally leads to exactly the kind of disrespect we, as a society, decided so long ago we didn’t need anymore.

Why are we encouraging more of this?

There is a certain kind of woman to which this is designed to appeal. There must be a piece of respected research out there that says these women will buy more of your product if you suggest to them that they matter and nobody else does.

I have met some women like this. I have no respect for them whatsoever, and so I have no respect for this particular marketing campaign.

Meh. Sometimes a pencil is just a pencil.

Doesn’t bother me. I just go to the store, get what I want, pay for it, and go home.
- philmon | 09/16/2010 @ 10:01
We just don’t have the luxury of looking at it that way.

This “mommy impulse” to view all others in the household as weak and helpless, has caused us some pretty massive problems as far as parenting, school performance, homework…it takes a lot of work to turn a child’s view around when his mother has been clinging to this “It’s All Up To Me” stuff.

I can appreciate how, if it really is all up to you, it’s really inviting having a service-oriented provider of foodstuffs stepping up to the plate and saying “we appreciate the pressure that’s on, and we’re here for you.” But the idea of encouraging co-dependence to sell the product, after seeing first hand the wreckage this brings down, is sickening.

If they understood how someone in my situation has to see it, they wouldn’t do it.
- mkfreeberg | 09/16/2010 @ 10:20
I understand. Maybe I’m just tired. 🙁
- philmon | 09/16/2010 @ 12:59
There’s another part of this, that almost strikes me as “sexist.”

No, scratch the “almost.” You have four guys working on something and a fifth male guy joins in, hey, there’s a 25% increase. And you’re allowed to look at it like that…but lately, it seems when we think about a woman doing something, there can’t be any teamwork — we’re absolutely screwed before she signs on, and then when she “takes charge” she’s going to save the day.

How come it has to be like that? In fact, why are questions like these even resolved culturally?

Women are thought to be much more advanced than men when it comes to functioning socially, as part of a group. Personally, I think this is generally correct. But it seems we put an inordinate amount of effort into making sure females never have to function that way — achieving a task, with peers, on equal footing.

Maybe I’m just jealous. Looking back over the years, how much time would I have saved if it was just understood “alright, we’ve screwed around on this thing without Morgan’s help long enough, now he’s going to take charge everyone get out of his way.”

But the thing about appealing to “Mom,” when it’s a footsoldier who’s actually entering the store buying the stuff, is annoying. Hey, next time it’s happening is tomorrow; company coming over, gotta get potatoes to go with the steak.

I think this is seasonal. Capitalizing on the sentiments left over from the back-to-school shopping rush. And my annoyance comes from that, really — fathers should be involved in their kids’ school careers. It should be just expected, like cutting the grass. And we should expect a masculine influence to be offered there. Which, a lot of the time, believe me — is not being expected.

And I can’t stand seeing kids forced into co-dependence, especially by influences outside the family. Yes, mothers are important, but that’s a far different thing from saying “It’s a Mom’s World.” Hey, if I want to see someone strutting around like it’s their world and everyone else is just living in it, I’ll put in a James Bond movie; that’s what fiction is for.
- mkfreeberg | 09/17/2010 @ 04:07
‘Course, the feminists probably think it’s sexist because it implies the women do all the shopping. And personally, I don’t mind stereotypes as long as we recognize the limits of their usefulness and applicability.

Yep, women are generally more nurturing. Yup, men are generally more protective (and I mean that in the physical sense). Women tend to think more about preparing the meals and the actual details of day to day living. Men tend to think more about the means to secure those details of everyday living in the long term. It’s not that neither does any of the things the other is known for. It’s an observed tendency, and I think it’s hard-wired.

So if I don’t want women to get upset that ads for house-cleaning products and cookery are geared to them and ads for drill motors and muscle cars are geared toward men, I can’t get too upset when a grocery store runs an ad campaign geared toward moms.

There are general gender roles in a culture, and they’re there for a reason, probably several reasons. And when the same ones pop up in culture after culture — it stands to reason that a good portion of it is tracable to The Nature Of The Beast.

The answer to women whining about stupid shit isn’t for men to whine about similar stupid shit. It’s to encourage everyone to grow a little thicker skin and let some water roll off of our duck-backs, fer Chrissake. IMHO, of course.

Nothing personal, Morgan, you’re like a blog brother to me. Just making an observation that I suspect deep down you probably agree with.
- philmon | 09/17/2010 @ 07:53
Oh yes, I do. Each word. No offense taken.

Refer back again to the title of the post, though. We needed a feminist movement…because men were running around with this bad attitude. It’s my world, the women are just decoration.

Fast forward fifty years. Look what we have. That’s supposed to be “progress.”

It reminds me of the guy cleaning leaves out of a parking lot with a leaf blower. Nothing picked up, the leaves are just moved somewhere else…where they’ll blow back in again.

No shitty attitudes improved. Just relocated elsewhere — after half a century of turning the world upside-down. In my world, this is worthy of comment.
- mkfreeberg | 09/17/2010 @ 09:15
You know, now that I think on it a few more minutes…my complaint here is pretty much the same as that other complaint I had, the one you liked, that RightNetwork picked up after you commented on it. Thanks for that, by the way. Are you a power-mover-shaker within RightNetwork? Cool, didn’t know it.

Anyway, the complaint here is really more against the feminist movement than against the food store; the complaint here is the same as the complaint there. It’s one of false advertising — look where we are, after all the dust has settled. It would be pretty silly to have been clamoring for this kind of “change” when the change first started, wouldn’t it?

“I want the men to get rid of their crappy attitude that anyone who isn’t like them, doesn’t count…and I want the women to pick up this crappy attitude and show them what it’s like.”

Now that I think on it further, I recall 35 years ago there were some women saying exactly this. But it doesn’t legitimize the effort in any way. People…men…women…who think they’re the only ones that count in life, are disgusting. People who encourage this behavior, to sell things, nauseate me.

Also, I live in Folsom — I get to see people indulge in this way of perceiving the world, every time I get in a car and drive down the road. I’m glad they don’t act like that where you live, assuming they don’t. Maybe I can dig out that “places I can live when I retire” list and embiggen it by one.
- mkfreeberg | 09/17/2010 @ 09:40
“I want the men to get rid of their crappy attitude that anyone who isn’t like them, doesn’t count…and I want the women to pick up this crappy attitude and show them what it’s like.”

Bingo. I suspect this was your point all along. 🙂

No, no connections to Right Network (that I know of). They probably just had the same reaction I did independent of me. Though I did forward that to a couple of people I thought MIGHT be able to get it out there to people in the RNC. The first may have forwarded it to some people with an ear, the second one, I doubt — yet — but he did just get on a comittee that will get to meet with Roy Blunt occasionally to hopefully help hold his feet to the fire.

Matter of fact, I don’t think I’m much of a mover and a shaker anywhere. A good day on my blog is 50 hits. I occasionally get many more — usually when somebody finds something on mine that they like, but 35 or so is more like average. I’m ultimately a speck of dust in the blog world, but I do think it ripples out and has its effect sometimes.
- philmon | 09/17/2010 @ 09:55
Incidentally, Columbia, MO is a college town (three different well-known ones) and there’s plenty of that attitude here. Fortunately, you don’t need to drive much more than 5 miles in any direction to be in a place occupied mainly by people who most decidedly do not. Plus there are some of us sane ones right here in town as well.
- philmon | 09/17/2010 @ 10:12
do not have that attitude, that is.
- philmon | 09/17/2010 @ 10:14

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