“And she does it all in heels”: mothers in contemporary Israeli TV commercials

Abstract

Although numerous studies have examined the image of women in advertising, the current study is exceptional in looking at the representations of motherhood and mothering practices in contemporary Israeli TV commercials, in an attempt to shed light on the ideological messages they reflect and promote. Sixty-four TV commercials were analyzed using critical discourse analysis. In many ads the mother is depicted as aesthetically pleasing and shapely. This inclusion of the beauty myth in all its cruel demands into the can-do mother myth, could lead Israeli women to a sense of failure as they compare themselves to the glamorous image in the ads and invariably fall short. The hetero-couple-headed nuclear family shown in many ads seems to be a conservative manifestation of the assumption that the “good mother” exists only in the framework of the normative family unit. It seems that in the context of the advertising genre, these are products that lie at the heart of family and couple relationships, and that it is therefore possible to speak of the commodification of the family. The study also found progressive images of the clever, resourceful mother alongside the pathetic, ridiculed one—a new kind of a “bad mother.”

Keywords:

• Motherhood
• images
• Israel
• bad mother
• critical discourse analysis

Notes

1. Wolf (1992) suggested that Western patriarchal culture offers women a false story, a myth, according to which the quality called “beauty” objectively exists and can thus be obtained. Men want to possess women who are beautiful (i.e., young, sexually attractive, and thin) so women must want to work on their beauty. Hence, this myth accelerates competition among women in order to divide them. The myth also suggests that women’s identities must be premised upon their “beauty” and hence women remain vulnerable to outside approval. As such, this myth functions to preserve the unequal gender power hierarchy in an era after the gains of feminism have enabled women to become stronger materially.

2. The databank contained commercials aired only until the end of 2012.

3. http://www.rashut2.org.il/broadcast_commercial.asp

4. Other findings of the study are discussed in a separate paper (Sigal Barak-Brandes, forthcoming).

5. In the findings, the brand names of the advertised products are not given, as they are not relevant, but rather only the product categories and years that the ads were aired. Text that does not appear in the original scripts is italicized.

6. Ashkenazi refers to Jews of Eastern European or North American descent, Mizrachi to Jews of Asian or North African descent.

7. Central Bureau of Statistics. 2014. Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2014, No. 65, Diagram 3.9. Total fertility rate in OECD member countries 2012. Accessed July 31 2015. http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton_diag_e.html?num_tab=03_09&CYear=2014