Mr. Clean’s Mother’s Day Advertisement
Mr. Clean’s advertisement sparked a wave of controversy when it was released in print and online in 2011, as it seemingly perpetuated many problematic messages of race, sexism, socialization, and age. This advertisement reinforces out-dated gender stereotypes about women and categorizes their primary role in society to be caretakers for their families. Firstly, we see that race is a component in this advertisement as on the right we see the image of a white mother cleaning a surface with her Mr. Clean sponge with her young daughter. I believe, the choice to use a white family was not one made on accident, but instead was used to portray the ‘ideal’ westernized standard of a domesticated housewife.
Secondly, sexism plays a huge role in how this advertisement is perceived. The text on the top right of the advertisement states “This Mother’s Day, Get Back To The Job That Really Matters”. This advertisement is clearly targeted towards women and not their male counterparts. The utilization of the word “job” implies that a woman’s main priority should be to be a housewife and fulfill their duty as a caretaker. On a day such as Mother’s Day, where mothers are meant to be celebrated and appreciated, they are still expected to “get back to” their cleaning duties, according to the advertisement.
Another problematic feature of this image is the component of age and socialization. It is shown in this advertisement that the mother is teaching her daughter how to use the Mr. Clean cleaning product. Both the mother and daughter have very enthusiastic and cheerful facial expressions. This displays that the mother is reinforcing and perpetuating societal gender roles to her daughter, as she prepares her for the role she is expected to fill when she becomes a wife in the future. According to this advertisement, young girls are expected to be excited and interested in household duties and chores from an early age.
Philosophy of Jammed Advertisement:
I have made three major changes to the text within the image to highlight the underlying misogynist message of the advertisement. I did not, however, alter the image in any way, as I believe that it fully captures the current social issues of race, sexism, age, and socialization. In the image, I have changed “Mr. Clean” to read “Mr. Gender Roles” to highlight the injurious message of sexism and the roles women are expected to fulfill in society. My alteration hopefully will reveal to the audience that this advertisement is targeting women and mothers to feel as though they need to use these cleaning products in order to be the “perfect mother” in the eyes of their families.
Additionally, I have changed the main text in the image that says “This Mother’s Day, Get Back To The Job That Really Matters.” to read “ This Mother’s Day (and every day), Women Should Get Back To The Kitchen”. The new text is meant to shock the advertisement’s audience and highlight its absurdity and the degrading message that the Mr. Clean company is perpetuating to its viewers. The altered text states “This Mother’s Day (and every day)”, signifying how women are not only expected to carry out their homemaking duties on Mother’s Day but also every other day, as it is their “job” to do so. The second part of the text states “Women Should Get Back To The Kitchen”, which is an infamously sexist and misogynistic quote, often said by men to women. I wanted to place this in the advertisement to explicitly illustrate the company’s true perception of women and the message they are attempting to deliver. Lastly, I added a text bubble for the daughter that says “Mom you missed a spot!”. This was meant to emphasize the ridiculousness of the image of the cheerful mom and daughter in the advertisement.
Overall, the changes made to the subverted version of this advertisement was meant to amplify and make more obvious the underlying tones of sexism. Such an aggressive message will hopefully reveal to women that this advertisement is coercing mothers to feel insecure about their role in society as well as in their families in order to sell these cleaning products.