Loose cannons and Sunday roasts

My parents have, what I would consider, connections with people who live in Offensive Town. A place that shares its borders with  Ignorant Ville and Judgemental Hill – where the glass houses have views of the high horses put out for agistment.

There was once a “friend” who made comments about my sexuality when I didn’t bring any boys to dinner. He would also question my political beliefs as a young woman at university who was enjoying sharing feminist ideals with her new colleagues, by eloquently stating that “you can’t be a feminist because you wear a bra”.  How underwear relates to one’s ability to think, I’m yet to learn.

In this man’s presence I drank and smoked more. It was my only line of defence. No point in arguing with someone who is patently stupid. Plus, my mother would take umbrage with my calling him a “fuckwit”, at someone else’s dinner table.

His wife, when I met LSH – the first man to be tortured by being a guest at one of these gatherings said, “I am pleased you’re happy.”  I smiled, although thinking that I hadn’t realised I was unhappy before. I’m being harsh, but that type of un-thought out platitude makes my trite-ometer go haywire.

Until recently, I’ve been safe, somehow protected from the silliness of my parent’s friends. Now married and having been working full-time for what seems like an eternity, I had my lifestyle choices being challenged over a Sunday roast.  I’ve mentioned before I’m not a great wife in the traditional sense of the word. I don’t actually like the terminology for married folk particularly that of ‘wife’. They are too labelling and smell of pigeon holes. LSH and I think of ourselves as a high performing team, working synchronistically to achieve goals. This, for so many people of my parent’s generation seems impossible to fathom.

“Do you make lunch for LSH?” One woman asked.
“No”. Was my deadpan reply.
“Who does the ironing in your house?” The same one woman asked again.
“I do it, in the main, but when I’m out or too tired and it needs to be done, LSH does it.”  I said, wondering why I am giving away all this boring, mundane detail about our household chores.
“Do you cook for him?”
“Uhm, sometimes,” I replied.
“Do you clean?”
“Yes, we share tasks.”
“When you have a child who will look after it?”
Things are starting to get out of hand and I, in turn, start to behave like a five year old.
“Oh, LSH will,” I say, my tone thickening, “He’s better with remembering to feed things than I am. I can barely remember to feed the dog.” This is not entirely true, I just take longer to get ready for work than LSH does, so he’s already on the front foot with dog things.
“Oh Michelle.” Super offensive nosey woman says. “Tsk, tsk tsk. Poor LSH.”

LSH who doesn’t do confrontation, said nothing. His silence  made this woman feel like she’d uncovered some great relationship secret LSH had been hiding from me. She gave LSH a knowing, pitying look of knitted eyebrows, sad down-turned lips and puppy dog eyes. I’m insulted for both me and for LSH. Apparently while I am a crappy, selfish wife, LSH is an idiot who can’t cook or clean for himself.

I can’t believe I have to endure these types of conversations. Anything I say as retort is going to be inflammatory, hence I say nothing and bury my face in a big glass of wine.

“Are you getting drunk?” asks super offensive woman.
“Yes.” I reply.
“Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow?” she asks.
“Yes. And that’s precisely the point of this entire conversation.” I say, while my inner voice does fist pumps.

What came first the stereotype or the people to fill the stereotype?

I’m in the marketing game and I love it and hate it all at the same time. Done right it can make a business. And I've seen it done well (and I’ve also seen it done badly). But I find that marketing doesn’t tend to receive the credit that it truly deserves and, from my own and colleagues’ experiences, I’ve found that marketing gets blamed for a whole world of things.

Sales aren’t being met. “It’s the marketing”, so the sales team yells from their speeding, finger pointing, bandwagon.

No-one wants the product. “Marketing didn’t tell the right story.” At least that’s what the product managers will tell us. We daren’t mention that what some product managers consider ‘bleeding innovation’, marketers consider ‘bleeding obvious’.

Advertising is one of the four, six or seven Ps, dependent on which marketing genius/speaker/talker of shite you listen to. So as part of our roles we’ll work with advertising agencies to create something amazing. It’s an interesting experience with mountains of research, plenty of buzzwords about consumer needs states, lifestyle paradigms, attitudinal ratios etc, being tossed around the room along with a good dash of stereotyping.

Recently, I sat, swiveling in a purple chair in an otherwiise all white advertising agency “think” room where a presentation was blast at me, full of research about women.

According to this research, women filled eight categories. We are either: Bold, Confident, Composed, Gentle, Grounded, Carefree, Controlling or Liberated. Each had, alongside the word, an image of a famous woman as well as some text advising us what the bold woman’s fears, goals, aspirations and inspirations were. 

I nearly threw up.

Real life women are supposed to fill each of these categories. I made mention, with my eyebrows raised,  that woman, and people, are actually quite complicated and simplifying to such an archaic degree might just alienate the market we’re trying to reach.

But of course, my outrage and contempt for this type of research, fell on deaf ears.

I thought about all the advertising I’d seen on TV. Insipid women smiling from ear to ear because their homes are clean, toilets are clean, kitchens are clean, husbands are clean and children are clean. Because all women care about is cleanliness?

It’s well known that advertisers try to make women feel guilty for doing something or not doing something. The only time when woman are not feeling guilty is when they are in their 20’s drinking coke, in a bikini on a beach with a boy. Every other time, little lady, you should be thinking about donning your floral frock, dancing around kitchen on point shoes, making a gourmet feast for your husband and children. After dinner, you should read stories to your children, help them with homework and ensure your husband’s scotch glass remains full. That’s it babe, that’s all we got. Unless you want to drink diet coke in your 30s when you work for an advertising agency or a magazine, then you can have some fun again too So long as you buy all the right clothes, wear the right make-up, spend a fortune on wrinkle-eradicator and don’t mind objectifying the young, buff window cleaner.  

Not to say I don’t do any of these things. I occasionally cook for my husband, I clean from time to time, I use wrinkle eradicator and I have worked in publishing. But still, I am fairly sure I don’t fit any of those stereotypes and neither do any of my friends or other women I have met, who are more than one-dimensional, more than just bold, confident or composed. Most of the women I know are mainly funny and kind but sometimes they’re argumentative, opinionated and moody, but mostly just fantastic and interesting.

Why can’t advertising agencies get this? Why does all the research they do, even in 2010, still put women into little boxes? Are the women answering these surveys living in another dimension?  Even Myers Briggs has worked out that people are multi-dimensional with different behavioural characteristics that become dominant at different times.

So which came first - the stereotype or people to fill the stereotype? The chicken or the egg.  I have yet to find a woman who fits the stereotype. But then, I am quite lucky and only know wonderful women.

And I recognise it’s advertising and we only have 30 seconds to send a message to reach the right people who will buy the product and tell their like-minded friends. I get that, but can’t we do something else? Can’t we not be predictable for 30 seconds and start breaking down these silly, ridiculous stereotypes? Can’t we find real women to answer the questions and find intelligent people to interpret the data, instead of relying on boring, tried and tested criteria that gives the same results year in year out?

I’m going to answer my own question and say that until we aren’t commercial beings and are willing to take risks and test to see if images of a woman who is multi-dimensional and real, can resonate with the public and encourage them to buy the product, we might never know. Dove ads portraying real woman worked. Now advertising agencies have turned the 'real woman' advertising strategy into a stereotype too! Of course, the real woman was always the grounded woman! 

Maybe if we’re prepared to take a financial loss for a while, until advertising starts to shift these attitudes, if we change the research groups to not deliver the responses we want, but ones that inspire us, and if we change the criteria we’re marking against, we might be able to make a shift from these trite advertising stereotypes. But that’s a maybe, assuming that the stereotype came second.