"I can put the wash on the line,
Feed the kids, get dressed,
pass out the kisses
and get to work by five to Nine.
I can bring home the bacon,
fry it up in a pan
and never, never, never let you forget your a man.......cause I'm a woman.....Enjoli."
Well, if I'm honest it's the last part I sing over and over again, the section that says bacon, pan, man.
Don't know the song? You can watch it on Yourube here. (Come back when you are done!)
I was a kid when this commercial was on TV and it's practically burned into the back of my skull it was on TV so often. This woman was beautiful, capable, and somehow managed to hang clothes out to dry, rear children, and wear a white dress! If you google the lyrics to this jingle (as I did today) it's likely that you will find blog posts about how jacked up and unrealistic this expectation is and how wrong it was that Maddison Avenue sold it to our mothers and all the young women and girls who saw it. Well, I don't know. I know plenty of amazing women who do the things this 1970's lady proclaimed to be capable of doing. She doesn't sing about the nights she is up with a sick kid, seeing a costume, soo tired she can hardly remember her own name, or that she fell asleep on the couch 15minutes after her kids are in bed. Seriously who in their right mind would?!? That would be one miserable jingle. Are the expectations she is singing about idealized? Yes. Is it hard as hell, and will some things fall though the cracks? Yep, most likely. So what? I'm not sure why having high expectations is a problem. Is it wrong to set your sights on a well rounded life, with a career, kids, and a happy marriage wrong? Should our daughters be striving for less?
Granted that something in the depth of accomplishment has got to give if you are going for a breath. Is that a problem? Maybe. I'm not sure it's worth getting mad at a 40 year old commercial. It still helps me through my days of running like a crazy person from kids to work to family to home to late night work to laundry to kids or whatever. Don't judge me. It's not like I wear the perfume.
