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Strollerderby
Tide's commercial featuring a laundry-loving, stay-at-home dad is a home run.
The other night while writing, I heard my husband chuckling at something on TV.
“This Tide commercial is funny,” he responded to my query about what was so funny.
Tide commercial. Interesting. A couple months ago I’d written about a Tide commercial featuring a prissy mom and tomboy daughter that pissed me off and missed the mark with its confusing cocktail of gender stereotypes.
“What was so funny about the commercial?,” I wanted to know. He told me the outline of the commercial featuring a stay-at-home dad, and I had to laugh. Not because I think the commercial is funny, although it is, but I had to laugh at the obvious about-face Tide made in response to the backlash against their earlier commercial.
Although I applaud the company for taking the step of showcasing an adorable stay-at-home dad talking about the perils of laundry stains and executing “herringbone” French braids, I still can’t help but feel like a pawn in some schmucky ad exec’s game. Can’t you just see the meeting behind this commercial?
Ad exec 1: We really took it in the kisser for that mom-daughter commercial. Lotta bad PR … And, more importantly, I lost out on that year-end bonus.
Ad exec 2: Well, let’s give ‘em the opposite. I’m seeing an adorable stay-at-home dad, you know, a Chandler Bing type … They’ll eat it up!
I guess it’s also possible the company just learned from their mistake, but I prefer to be a skeptical misanthrope, it’s my natural way. Either way, whatever it takes, I say, to showcase what’s really going down in American households today. And judging by the feedback below, folks are really digging it.
Click here to see the new Tide stay-at-home dad commercial: Continue reading »
One guy says keeping up with this little fellow is no big deal.
Okay, people. Before you zip down to the comment section and rip me a new one for the title of this post, please note the quotation marks I used. You know why I used them? Because those aren’t my words. They’re the words of a “community columnist” from my local paper named David H. Howell.
Howell is presumably a smart man. At least that’s what I would gather given that he’s taught philosophy at Pellissippi State Community College since 1988. Howell is also presumably an in-touch man. At least that’s what I would gather given that he was a stay-at-home dad for two and a half years.
All that said, his “community column” read like a smugly written open letter to anyone who has ever complained about how difficult it is to be a full-time parent — its primary message as unmistakable as it is direct: “Oh, please. Get over yourselves, people.”
And such a message strikes me as neither smart nor in touch.
Brian St. Pierre goes from bottles to blitzes.
Picture this. One week, you’re calling a pediatrician in the kitchen. The next, you’re calling audibles at the line of scrimmage. Of an NFL game. One week, you’re changing diapers in the nursery. The next, you’re changing plays in the huddle. On national TV. One week, you’re chasing a naked baby on the way to the bathroom. The next, you’re being chased on a naked bootleg on the way to the end zone. By an all-pro linebacker.
Impossible, right? Wrong. Just ask Brian St. Pierre. Because last week he was a stay-at-home dad. This week, he’ll be starting at quarterback for the Carolina Panthers.
One of the very many things that makes me happy I am living in this era versus the early 1960s (at least as presented on “Mad Men”) is that fathers are expected to take an active role in childcare — and the icky diaper-changing nose-wiping stuff, too, not just playing with your clean, bathed children for an hour before bedtime. I even can think of four stay-at-home dads I personally know without even having to strain my memory.
But the culture is pretty slow to change around us. This NPR essay by Richard Weissbourd talks about being relegated to the role of secondary parent, that his wife is pretty much expected to know all and take responsibility for all, while he’s treated like an adjunct.
Weissbourd points out, for example, that schools rarely send report cards to fathers after a divorce Continue reading »
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