Kind of like feminist outrage, second-wave/seventies style - but with boys included
You’ll have to excuse my slight confusion and possible grogginess. It is in part at least due to working all night without being to sleep extra yesterday, taking some sleeping pills mid morning, and then not even slightly seeing them through to their planned end, sleeping for a rubbish couple of hours, then waking and pointlessly checking email before falling back into a couple more hours fitful sleep. Actually it’s not ‘in part’ due to that. It is ‘entirely’ due to that.
I just lost my temper at the television. I’m used to casual idiocy - I watch TV an awful lot. But nothing, NOTHING touches, for me, the current advert for some fast food chicken parts operation, a large famous one.
So they have this product providing a solution to the only thing that could possibly go wrong for the modern family - the sudden inability for Mum to provide for her family.
It pictures a tired looking woman sitting on the sofa - feet up, looking like she’s come back from a day at work or something - with two kids, an adult male who looks like he’s also been out at work, and they all look quite worried, and then it reveals the solution to all their worry
“Give mum a night off!”
And then shows a bucket, containing some greasy looking chicken, some sub-heinz baked beans, and a bunch of other crap.
And there’s a voice over suggesting that sometimes, just sometimes, it’s ok if the grown woman of the house is given one evening off every intermittent now and again.
“Because there’s no substitute for mum.”
No substitute apart from a take away vat of factory farmed bird bits, dipped in seasoned flour and deep fried. Yes, the only thing that could possibly replace this woman is a chicken-bucket.
Because there’s no substitute for mum.
No, because apparently dad has no arms, a complete psychotic block about hobs and is a complete and utter tool. Is he?
No, he probably isn’t - and I do understand that this is how some families work, but then, there’s a lot who don’t as well, isn’t there? And even if there aren’t, the suggestion that there are responsibilities that should or can be undertaken by only one member of a family in 2008 is, frankly, a bucket of steaming chickenpizzle.
And it’s not just the suggestion the only women can do this. It’s the suggestion that only women DO do this.
Seriously, how do fathers who take their part - if not take a majority or sole part, as there are many that do - in taking care of their children NOT get offended by this kind of mindless horseshit?
You’ll have to excuse me, I’m extremely tired and extremely grumpy. I was going to post about something entirely different tonight, you know. But now I’m going to bed instead.
Hear hear!
And let’s not even get into how miserable the chicken must have been until it sacrificed itself for Mum’s night off.
Comment by Katy Newton — 25 February, 2008 11:39 pm
Agreed! Completely. That advert annoys me too. And she’s there on the sofa looking impeccable and impossibly young, which is unlikely given that this is her one night of a month (or that’s the impression we’re given).
Booo. Boo to outdated stereotypes of the nuclear family.
Comment by Anna F — 26 February, 2008 12:27 am
I’d like to point out that as a man, husband and father, that it falls upon me at least 50% of the time to provide a cooked meal for my family. So yes, it offends me too.
In fact, there are a lot of ads these days where men are portrayed as bumbling fucktards, incapable of dressing themselves.
I don’t know if you had the Nescafé ad on your side of the pond, where the woman wanted to hide from her incompetent, annoying family, so poured herself some gacky instant coffee and dressed up like the couch so as to cunningly camouflage herself. Meanwhile, the husband is walking around the house in his shirt and jocks mumbling “Honey, I can’t find my pants.”
Just how many people can they malign in one ad? The pantless man, and the woman who went to the trouble of buying 6 metres of couch-matching fabric, spent all night making a couch frock with matching hat, so she could spend 8½ minutes sitting on said couch next morning, sipping on her stale-pipe-tobacco flavoured beverage, as her needy, retarded family self-destructs around her.
Comment by drew — 26 February, 2008 12:54 am
Here in the US, I had to suffer through the onslaught of insipid and often insulting jewelry ads around Valentine’s. JC Penny’s had an ad where the male narrator spoke like a hypnotist as a hideous necklace was waved back and forth like a pendulum. Saying the woman would ‘love the necklace’, ‘love him’, ‘be happy with him’. That he was the perfect man. Because, of course, women are just glorified love vending machines with squishy bits.
Watch and join me in disgust:
http://www.jcpbrands.com/valentines/?
Don’t get me started on Kay’s or De Beers.
Comment by jmanna — 26 February, 2008 3:41 am
Ha ha, I love a good grumpy rant, bring em on. But aren’t all men tools with no arms, and all women domestic drudges? Cos that’s what I want to be when I grow up. Or possibly I want to be a bucket of greasy chicken. God, careers decisions are so difficult.
Also, I missread “factory farmed bird bits” as “factory farmed bird tits”, which was massively disturbing on a number of levels. Urgh.
Comment by Eloise — 26 February, 2008 7:24 am
“MUM’s gone to Iceland”. Discuss.
Comment by Chris — 26 February, 2008 8:50 am
Christ, that hadn’t occured to me until you pointed it out. And you’re absolutely right.
Nad Eloise, I did exactly the same bit of mis-reading.
Comment by two left feet — 26 February, 2008 8:57 am
I’m glad you ranted on blog about this because I ranted on sofa at precisely the time a man served me up a wholesome healthy mainly organic meal.
And as Chris said, “Mum’s gone to Iceland.” I walk past Iceland most days, I have never shopped there. It’s not even ‘on principle’, but subconsciously I sense it has nothing for me (I don’t eat chicken nuggets, you see, which apparently is the staple diet offered by loving Mums up and down the land)
Comment by Gert — 26 February, 2008 9:06 am
Hoorah! Someone else who shouts at adverts. The other evil one is that one for “picture loans” or somesuch nonsense. (only on around the time of Jeremy Kyle suspiciously). Leaving aside all the other rubbish WHY would you film your husband on the phone?
Grr.
Comment by nuttycow — 26 February, 2008 10:13 am
Dads in ads have long been lampooned. Let’s not forget that poor sap (or bumbling fucktard, like that) in some steamed dough ad. Mum - smug, natch - is busy behind a worktop doing something with herbs or spoons and looking a bit as if she forgot to wind her brain up that morning. 2 or 3 drear offspring are involved in some unconvincing action or embarrassing bickerfest, but all are united when Dad wanders in looking for bread. Can’t remember the shtick - is he baffled that bread comes in a bag, or can he not compute that it is square and white or square and brown or some similiar quantum leap too far for the poor fule wot paid for the wretched stuff. Wha’evah, Mum rolls her eyes, nippers do likewise, Dad gets his coat and goes to the shed. Presumably to dial up phone sex or stab himself with the garden fork.
Comment by Milla — 26 February, 2008 11:16 am
Hear hear to the post and all the comments. I have seen that advert and was found, three ads later, sitting with my mouth still hanging open. It was only my absolute shock that such guff had been ok’ed by teams of people that saved the hapless TV from a severe shouting-at.
Comment by KT — 26 February, 2008 11:29 am
Thanks all. That’s the thing - I’m just fucking AMAZED that this kind of thing must have passed through so many commercial agency meetings and corporate campaign memos saying ‘approved’. And we’re supposed to be COMPLETELY fucking OVER this by now, aren’t we?
And before some advertising gonk comes along and says “well it works as a campaign, doesn’t it - you’re all talking about it after all!”
Yes, we’re all talking about how moronic and insulting it is, and how we’d probably rather eat our own children than pick up a bucket of patronising health-combatant. And how, frankly, if this is how the advertising industry wants to appeal to people then they, and their clients, are clearly all outdated fuckwits.
So yeah, we are talking about it. Well DONE advertising agency. Well DONE fast food factory-chicken fryer!
Comment by anna — 26 February, 2008 11:37 am
I’m not even a father and that ad offends me - because the “husband” in the frilly apron is shown to be an ineffectual idiot at the end - “Look, look kids, he’s putting the greasy paper waste from our dinner into the bin while wearing Mum’s frilly apron, all sped-up in a tribute to the great master of comedy, Benny Hill. Oh, chortle, there really is no substitute for mum, is there.”
But I generally don’t eat takeaway buckets of chicken more than once-a-year, so I don’t think the ad is aimed at me.
It’s aimed at stupid people who can’t cook. (And, quite potentially, stupid people who can’t eat - people who don’t have the critical faculties to realise that tasteless chicken that you have to wring out before you eat it is probably not a good substitute for something mother would make.)
Comment by Damian — 26 February, 2008 11:57 am
Grrr!
Comment by Damian — 26 February, 2008 12:21 pm
What are you doin watching the ads people?
Get yourself a PVR or a video and skip right past them.
Comment by Aaron Seasearch — 26 February, 2008 1:43 pm
Ah, interesting, a ‘but, ah!’ clever comment I wasn’t expecting.
I have a PVR, Aaron. Sometimes I just happen to watch things when they’re actually on.
Most of the time I zip through ads. But sometimes, watching at the hour actually scheduled, I don’t.
And sometimes I do. Because, you know, we should enjoy it while we can
Comment by anna — 26 February, 2008 2:00 pm
Blimey, but I’m sooooo glad I don’t have a TV any more. I’d forgotten how dreadful ads are! Mind you, I do run across them at the cinema - and is it just me, or is that bizarre ad for cheapo men’s deodorant (you know, the one where the bloke is suddenly made of chocolate) just CREEPY?! A girl on the Tube bites his bum. And comes back up with brown smears all over her face. Gives me nightmares …
Comment by Sophie — 26 February, 2008 2:28 pm
Vile vile vile. Hate patronising ‘let’s talk to mum’ advertising… makes me want to vomit.
Hoorah for the grumpy rant!! It beats drunken rant hands down, I feel…
xx
Comment by Vicky — 26 February, 2008 3:32 pm
My husband is the stay at home dad with our 18 month old and 4 year old, I drive in to work every day and “bring home the bacon”. When are ad agencies going to realize that it’s not the 1950’s anymore? What’s scary is that there is people out there that still believe have that mentality and are shoving it down other people’s throats. Shouldn’t that generation be retired in Florida and not writing commercials?
Comment by Katrina — 26 February, 2008 4:26 pm
Two left feet, I love you! Or possibly you horrify me as much as I horrify myself? same difference…
Comment by Eloise — 26 February, 2008 7:47 pm
I’ve yelled at that advert myself.
Do ya know - I’d really hope that the kids might make themselves an ‘add-hot-water-and-stir’ meal rather than eat such horrible mass produced battery-reared rubbish.
I’d feel happier if they sat down to a plate of chips, although I’d rather they were wrapped in newspaper.
Comment by Fee — 26 February, 2008 9:35 pm
Agree. I hate that ad.
Well said.
Comment by Cara — 26 February, 2008 10:12 pm
I watch that ad and struggle to work out what disgusts me more, the insulting attitudes towards the male/female roles in the nuclear family or the food itself, which, even in shiny advert land looks for all the world like congealing lumps of deep-fried shit.
It’s almost as bad as the plastic surgery adverts on the tube - “New face! New you!” or whatever. Horrible.
Comment by Léonie — 27 February, 2008 11:03 am
At one level - total disgust. Though my husband has been known to do the ‘helpless, hopeless male’ thing occasionally!
Not to mention those poor chickens.
At another level - it’s advertising. Write to the Advertising Standards Authority & complain to them. Or get over it.
Make you wonder though, all that money being spent on those bright lasses & lads in advertising. Urk!
Comment by Sharon — 27 February, 2008 12:25 pm
Sharon - in reply to first level - yes, that’s what I was writing about/ranting about. It’s a blog, that’s what they’re there for, isn’t it?
second level - get over it? I’m completely over it, I was ranting about it on my blog, as it was something that had annoyed me that very second and that is what blogs can be for, I think.
‘makes you wonder about all that money being spent on …’ - are we getting over it, or are we ranting now? Clearly we should rant if we feel like it - for that is what (sometimes) blogs, and comments on blogs are for.
Yay.
Comment by anna — 27 February, 2008 1:08 pm
[...] Which is why a post this week by the lovely Anna got me all riled up in a feminist-food-nazi kind of way – I have so many issues with KFC Family Buckets that I don’t know where to start, and throw in a bit of deeply patronizing and lazy advertising and I’m bouncing off the walls in fury. [...]
Pingback by The H Factor » Oh My God - Mark Ronson, Version — 27 February, 2008 11:02 pm
… and just to put the (synthetic) icing on the Betty Crocker cake, the bloke’s kids dress him up like some dreadful parody of a pantomime dame so he can serve it all up (ie, open the buckets). Is the horrendous drag act the two brats simper smugly at supposed to be their version of what a woman looks like? Condescending all round, from the portrayal of ‘the family’ to the kind of sinister slop (KFC call it food) that the ad people expect them to get excited about.
Great post. Love the blog.
Comment by Melissa — 28 February, 2008 7:17 am
I do 90% of the cooking in our family. So I find the ad offensive too ;-)
But seriously, I do think it sets up the wrong idea that only Mum should be doing the cooking.
And the idea that the bucket is any kind of substitute for food… Not least because our cat will eat bits of chicken we’ve cooked, but wouldn’t be seen dead eating that sort of takeaway.
Comment by Richard Gillin — 28 February, 2008 11:38 am
Hey Guys it’s an Ad. It is transmitted but you don’t have to receive. I enjoy reading your responding rants but hope you don’t really feel that bad.
Don’t let them dictate how you feel. Chill.
Comment by Kama — 3 March, 2008 7:04 pm
How bizarre of Kama. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a commenter on a blog address their remark solely at the male commenters. I find it extraordinary, and quite possibly ironic, on a post entitled
Comment by Gert — 3 March, 2008 10:18 pm
Don’t know if she meant it that way but “guys” can mean guys and girls (mixed company), it’s used a lot here.
Comment by Katrina — 6 March, 2008 7:11 pm
Katrina, I don’t know, and care even less where ‘here’ is for you, but I am sure that if you addressed your mixed company as ‘girls’ there would be quite a few male people feeling a bit irritated. It might be deemed suitable for addressing boys and girls, but I’m afraid I stopped being a girl back in the Eighties.
Comment by Gert — 6 March, 2008 10:42 pm
People, people, calm down. Yes, ‘guys’, includes girls. Yes, ‘girls’ means you, ladies, however old you are. Whining about it just makes you look silly.
This isn’t an ad aimed at lentil-knitting, macrame-eating guardianistas. It’s clearly pitching at C2DEs - who tend to have more traditional family roles. So, yes, it is a ‘night off’ for Mum. This may not be how it works in your Islington communes (most of which, by the sound of it, have yet to see the doubtless charming fruit of your untrimmed-but-organic loins); it may not be ideal; but I can assure you that this is how much of Britain still works. You can hardly blame the advertisers for wanting to address reality, rather than a Marxist ideal, can you?
Comment by karl — 15 March, 2008 11:39 am
Jesus Christ, Karl, this was weeks ago, Who even CARES anymore except you? Seriously, this was some stupid thing that occupied my brain for about 2 minutes. I certainly couldn’t give a shit about it anymore, I’m guessing most of my readers couldn’t - most of whom don’t live in Islington, so don’t start throwing your little class-warrior snipes around, it’s silly (and if you’ve come over here from the Guardian site I’m afraid there’s not the same tit-for-tat culture of debate here, it’s a different kind of blog, it’s my blog, and I was just having a grump about something because I was grumpy. And I really don’t care for arguments - never have) - so I don’t care, they don’t care, the only one still ‘whining’ here is you. So stop banging on about it, will you? It just makes you sound like a cockfarmer.
Not that kind of cockfarmer, the other kind. You don’t mind ‘cockfarmer’, do you?
Seriously, though, there really isn’t much point in getting all argumentative and class war about this. I mean a) it is shit food, you can’t be denying that b) it is an outdated portrayal of family to be throwing around, you surely can’t deny that and c) It’s an advert! Someone in a grumpy mood decided to have a little shout about it on their own personal blog because they were tired and ratty and that’s what personal blogs are for! Who cares? No one, Karl. No one cares. But you, apparently. Now please, if you’re going to hang around my personal corner of the interwebnet, can you be a bit nice? I don’t need argumentative people in my free time, I just can’t cope with it.
Comment by anna — 15 March, 2008 12:55 pm
[...] good to find I’m not the only person who thinks this ad is insulting to both women and men. Some greenies aren’t mad on it, [...]
Pingback by Sex(ism) sells « One Year to Change the World — 7 June, 2009 1:34 pm