MUMBAI: Brand X “launches heart-warming video dedicated to all ‘Super Moms’” blares an accessories brand campaign…“Celebrating the superstar mothers”, says another. “Dedicated to mothers who like a superwoman…blah blah” reads yet another brand campaign.
Come Mother’s Day and one is inundated with ads showcasing heroic, self-sacrificing moms multitasking, juggling an over-abundance of chores while managing both the work and home fronts super efficiently, constructing an image of a super-human or a symbol of divinity with multiple pairs of hands. Brand after brand in ad after ad repeats the same tired tropes of a “super mom” effortlessly ‘doing it all’ or role-playing the selfless epitome of virtue and goodness in a bid to keep the domestic machinery well-oiled and running smoothly.
In a damning indictment of how we treat our women as a nation, a 2011 Nielson Survey found that women in India are the most stressed of all. The study conducted across 21 countries measured stress by asking women questions such as ‘If they often felt pressured for time’, ‘If they rarely had time to relax’, ‘If they felt stressed/ overworked most of the time’. An overwhelming 87 per cent of Indian women signalled that they felt stressed most of the time, and 82 per cent had no time to relax.
Ten years down the line, a cursory look at our ads and campaigns rolled out ahead of Mother’s Day makes it clear that little has changed in women’s lives, while also presenting a possible indicator of why this may be so.
Lifestyle & mobile accessories brand KDM has launched a ‘Karo Dil Ki Marzi Mummy with KDM’ video ahead of Mother’s Day, that starts with a young daughter introducing her mother who’s talented but sacrificed her dreams for the sake of her family. The film shows the mom busy dusting, cleaning, cooking and having no time to follow her passion. The key purpose of the campaign is to pay tribute to all the “selfless sacrificing mothers who need to also listen to their heart along with performing their jobs”. The ad, which probably has its heart in the right place, unfortunately, chooses to play to the gallery with all the mommy stereotypes in place.
A recent LG Dishwasher advert, although not strictly a mother’s day campaign - takes us right back to the 70’s era if not earlier with its brand film and tagline of ‘Love wife, Love LG Dishwasher’. Circa 1982, Prestige pressure cooker ad, anyone? The vintage ad for the Prestige pressure cooker brand had a similar sentiment to sell its brand of pressure cookers- “Jo Biwi se kare pyar, Woh Prestige se kaise kare inkaar”! And from the looks of it, the time has stood still for the LG dishwasher ad!
Coming back to 2022, LG’s latest depicts a seemingly modern-looking urban couple beginning their marital journey. The film goes on to show the new bride struggling and labouring over a pile of dirty dishes. That is, till her knight-in-shining-armour – the husband, decides to rescue her from the catastrophic fate by gifting her an LG dishwasher. The voiceover in the ad ends with a believe it or not- “Not only take care of your dishes but your wife’s hands too!” slogan, clearly implying that it’s only the woman’s job to keep the soiled dishes 'spic n span’. If only the brand’s marketing team had some “modern” thinking to go along with the modern features it talks about inbuilt in the machine!
If you thought this was an aberration to the brand’s dishwasher campaigns, there’s more. In another advert of the same series, the film goes on to nominate the husband as “the best husband in the world” for being gracious enough to gift his wife an LG dishwasher. The ad spot goes on to commission the brand itself as “The true symbol of love and care” for “Keeping your wife’s hands soft and beautiful as ever”! Coming from a multinational conglomerate, and one of the leading names in consumer electronics and home appliances, one would have expected better. But alas..that was not to be.
A lot has been said about equal parenting, but the truth remains, in one way or the other, women do end up with a larger share of work at the domestic level and such advertisements and brand campaigns further drill into the trope of a woman-managing-it-all perfectly are not helping matters!
In a slightly refreshing mode, the latest Prega news campaign seeks to break the stereotypical image of a “perfect” mom while acknowledging that a mother can be humanly imperfect and not excel at every role laid out by society. The brand in its latest Mother’s Day campaign depicts a working mother undergoing guilt pangs because she feels she has let her baby down. The film goes on to emphasise the message that mothers need not be perfect all the time and “embraces the imperfection of a mother with the #SheIsImperfectlyPerfect campaign”.
On the flip side, the pregnancy detection brand’s International Women’s Day 2022 campaign appears to be at odds with its Mothers’ day messaging. It speaks about the same tired trope of celebrating the “boundless spirit of womanhood with its #SheCanCarryBoth” message, where it enunciates “the huge strength of women who do not shy away from any form of responsibility”. Here the brand attempts to examine via the life journeys of four women passing through a railways waiting room, whether being a mom while being “extremely rewarding”, takes a toll on one’s ambitions and dreams? While the concept and intent behind the campaign is to be commended, (as it says, “, it's time to break free from the nay-sayers of society and bring in confidence to women that #SheCanCarryBoth!”) the ad ends up glossing over the challenges faced by new mothers in trying to single-handedly manage the baby, home and her career, with the daddys, as usual, nowhere in the picture.
However, to be fair, the brand has in the past highlighted important issues faced by women through its ads. It even threw light on an important matter such as postpartum depression (PPD) and how new mothers grapple with it, in its 2018 campaign, emphasises how PPD is a harsh reality and how we, as a society, can help mothers deal with it by being understanding and empathetic.
But sadly, such advertisements are exceptions rather than the rule, and the major part of the ads still depict women and mothers in conformist avatars. This, while adding to the not-so-subtle societal pressure on women, also takes away the culpability of the rest of the household to do their bit in easing the load on a single individual.
It's 2022. High time we retired the “super-mom” from our ads? And bring them down from the ‘divine’ super-humanly pedestal we have bestowed upon them only to weigh them down with the crown of our expectations? Let's keep hoping.
