Gendering Homes

These images come from the Panasonic: Ideas for Life website. This is the "home of the future." What do we learn about the home of the future?

Men work in the office:



The only other image of a man alone is in the home theater room. There are no images of a man focusing on or interacting with a child.

Women make sure the kids are ready for school:



And women teach the kids to cook:



The caption to the kitchen image says, "In the kitchen, the mother is the teacher and her children are the pupils."

Thanks, Patrick C.!


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Posted by Gwen Monday, April 7, 2008 at 8:42 PM Labels: , , , ,  

3 comments:

  mary_m

April 8, 2008 at 12:27 AM

There's this commercial for some housecleaning product that's been annoying the bejeezus out of me lately.

To prove the strength of said household product, a horde of small children are set loose in the house and put their greasy mitts on the works.

Then, fearless Mom steps in and cleans up after them.

In my world, fearless Mom hands the horde of small children a can of said household product, a roll of paper towels, and tells them they will have no joy in their young lives until the place is spotless.

Commercial Mom is a sucker.

  Anonymous

April 8, 2008 at 6:54 AM

Speaking about women and cleaning in commercials, there is a commercial for various cleaning products with what they call the "home made simple squad" where a british woman (why are there so many british accents in cleaning products ads in north america? first the Cheer lady, then the Glade/Febreeze/whatever hamster, now this woman) is looking for "women who are passionnate about keeping their homes clean".
They share tips for coping with kids and housework at the same time, and one even declares that she loves doing laudry!

  Anonymous

April 8, 2008 at 8:44 AM

So the only major difference between the "Home of the Future" as depicted in 1950 vs. 2008 is liquid crystal displays? Sigh. I'm tired of being treated like a creature fascinated by bright, shiny objects. Then again, some objects nowadays are really bright and shiny...

By the way, the "Home of the Future" that looks more probable every day will likely embody perfect equality in the sense that everyone will be gathering food and water (if they're lucky), chopping wood, patching holes in the tarp (aka "the roof"), shooting at gangs of bandits who want your tarp, and all the other sundry chores of post-civilization living.

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