Kenjus W. sent us this remarkable Pampers commercial:
It, of course, is another instance of activism by purchase, which we discussed at length on this blog. Why doesn’t Pampers just buy some babies some vaccines? Wouldn’t that be nice? No, they’ll only help keep babies alive if you buy their product.
But it’s also a fascinating example of the way in which “white” “Westerners” are seen as rescuing the rest of the world. This white mother with her white baby represent the West (erasing the diversity of people who live there). And she and her baby are counterposed to all the other mothers and their babies representing different racial groups (which are assumed to be coherent categories, even continents, i.e., Asian, Black, Indian, etc).
In the narrative of this commercial, all women are bonded by virtue of being natural nurturers of babies (and I could take issue with that, too), but the white Western woman is the ultra-mother. They may be sisters, but there are big and little sisters in this narrative. The babies run to her as if they are drawn to her ultra-motherhood and she treats them all, just for a moment, as if they were he very own. Pampers wants you to think, of course, that when you buy a pack of Pampers, you are “helping” Other mothers and can save those Other babies.
This is just another manfestation of an old colonial belief, the white man’s burden, or the belief that white men had to take care of the rest of the world’s people because they were incapable of taking care of themselves. The image below (from The Journal [Detroit], 1923, according to wikipedia) gets the idea across:
Great find, Kenjus!
7 Comments
How about this: http://www.volvic1for10.co.uk/
Its really absurd the way they depict people from other places, specially when pampers is probably sold in all of those countries.
Wow! I’m not sure what’s worse about this ad: the determinist portrayal of mothering (notice, no fathers are present) or the ethnocentric picture of social relations.
And is that Salma Hayek doing the narration? For some reason, I’ve always thought of her as more sensitive to the complexity of gender and ethnic relations than your average actors and producers, but I guess I was wrong.
I told my husband how horrible this commercial is, but he came in at the end of it. Yes, no fathers apparent, the white woman to the rescue, the “foreign” babies hugging her while their mothers looked on gratefully, gah!
Thank you for posting this; I love this site.
http://www.bohemianbahamian.blogspot.com
I was also impressed with the way that the not-white mothers and babies were Othered. “Traditional” clothing for everyone! That way, we can tell where these poor, helpless brown children are from. Sure, the point is to emphasize the diversity of the children that will be helped by this campaign, but damn. Now they’re not just diverse, but also “traditional” and markedly different. (For further contrast with the helped mothers and babies, the couple of extras shown at the beginning of the ad are also white.)
The second thing that popped into my head is how we’re supposed to deal with the contrast between the good and bad of the product — buying Pampers means some poor brown child will get vaccinated, but, for example, what about the landfill waste created by the diapers themselves? Or the conditions under which they are made? What effect does it have on these children’s health?
Did they really just show the Asian woman with a STRAW HAT. Embarrassing.
Yes. The racist overtones of this particular ad drive me crazy.
Another thing that’s always bugged me about those ads is this: it would be better for the environment to just buy cloth diapers once, and wash them. And just think of all the money you could donate to direct care programs like Doctors Without Borders if you weren’t buying disposable diapers.
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