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NO, MR Peter Shackleton, marketing and merchandise executive for Truworths, no Mr Javu Baloyi, spokesperson for the Commission for Gender Equality.
You did not begin to understand the social media complaints about Truworths Mother’s Day campaign (Timeslive, May 6). Did you even read them?
None of the complainants asked for “clothes that sit below their knees”, Mr Baloyi – because very few modern mothers think of themselves that way. Nobody wanted a campaign featuring a dear old duck in a cardigan and pearls. We accept you need to focus on a woman who looks good – but age-appropriate good, okay?
The ‘Mother’ in Mother’s Day is BY DEFINITION not 18 – and Mr Shackleton, that’s not “aspirational” for most mothers I know (I don’t care how old the model actually was, by the way; she looks 18 or 20, and that’s what counts): someone with two toddlers in her past is NEVER going to look like that again – no, Mr Baloyi, not even film stars and schlebs. Ever heard of Spanx?
In any case, holding Victoria Beckham and Angelina Jolie up as examples, as Mr Baloyi does, is a nonsense. Dear man, it is the JOB of these two very wealthy women to look fabulous! How many hours does Beckham (Mrs) spend with her personal trainer each day?
What’s the cosmetic budget in the Jolie household? One of their investments is surely a personal chef on call at all hours to ensure that the whole family, Mom included, eats like Goop.
I can’t afford their beauty programme, and nor can most women.
Who is buying the ‘aspirational’ lingerie items advertised, Mr Shackleton? It’s bought as gifts for Mother’s Day, you said, so it’s not the moms themselves. Can I hazard a guess (and I may be wrong here, I’m not privy to the inside info on your computers): it’s men.
Husbands and fathers whose ‘aspirations’ likely include a wife who looks a little like that young model. (Or children, possibly… would a child buy an underwired black lace bra for mom, I wonder?)
It’s very nice of them, of course, to think that a woman who’s had two C-sections and breastfed her kids would welcome the bra and panty set advertised, and it’s lovely that they still think mom is a sex goddess, but I wonder how the women really feel as they unwrap the gift and smile and kiss and ooh and aah.
Because in my experience, sexy undie gifts from men have always evoked snorts among the women who receive them, as the group of friends pass around the Chardonnay and compare notes. Underwire bras do great things for your figure, true; but they poke and pinch, and wiggle free of their casing and head north to stab you in the throat. I discovered the wire from my new brand-name bra was making a break for it while I was changing money in a market in Accra – because the money-changer was mesmerised by the blue-tinted metal inching out of my cleavage. (Maybe he thought I was undercover and wired…)
Our complaint, Mr Shackleton, is that it seems almost no retailers accept that women have ages and stages of life, and it is entirely appropriate to portray those in ad campaigns. (Not just Truworths – look at the American Swiss mom who says “I must have it” here. Very progressive, she’s not even wearing a wedding ring – well done, that retailer, congratulations on including the mom who’s not married! And here you have the image adorning Edgar’s Mother’s Day ads – if she’s in her mid-twenties, I’m Helen Mirren…)
Women are judged in the harshest ways on their looks these days, an unbearable pressure that’s far worse than it’s ever been in my life, and you, by rolling out the incredibly young and gorgeous and airbrushed and Photoshopped like this, fuel that fire. You also help to set up the next generation of girls by surrounding them with images that belong to just one small stage in their lives – youth.
Every girl of 13 today has about 15 or so years in that stage. Then she should happily move on to another stage, one where her beauty includes a laugh line or two and a tummy that isn’t taut as a drum.
Instead of looking back bitterly at youth, she should be free to enjoy her changing beauty as she reaches her forties and fifties. And beyond – my current aspiration is to be like Judi Dench one day!
I am sure I speak for thousands and thousands of women when I say that, while I want to feel attractive lifelong, sure, I don’t yearn for youth. There’s too much life between me and that gauche little idiot. What’s in my eyes and brain is all my lived joy, my pain, the laughter and learning and mourning and picking up pieces and finding meaning and taking stock of a love decades long and finding my place in my career and travelling and making (and sometimes losing) friends and seeing children become people and growing a garden…
No, I don’t want my youth back. And I don’t want the hammer hammer hammer of the industries that make money off creating unrealistic dreams and aspirations telling me (and worse, the young women I know) that I should want my youth back, that youth is all there is.
If you want to create campaigns that are ‘aspirational’, or reach for gender equality, guys, you should be fighting for women’s rights to celebrate and be celebrated, whatever their age.
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.
