Ryan C. O'Reilly

On this day, July 19, in 1848 a few hundred men and women gathered 

at a chapel in Seneca, New York. Among attendees were event organizers Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who convened the conference to “discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of women.” At the conference attendees – including abolitionist Frederick Douglas – drafted a document meant to rally people the way the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation did.

Fast-forward a century and a half. 

My job on most nights in our house in the present day is to make dinner. I don’t think my wife and I came to this division of duties with any kind of progressive intention in mind. I just like to cook. I don’t watch much television, but sometimes I’ll have the machine on while preparing the meal to keep the non-cooking part of my brain occupied. Depending on the time of day, there are a considerable number of ads for kitchen appliances, cleaning tools and chemicals, food ingredients and the like. Ads for Swiffers, Lemon Pledge, Bounty Paper Towels and Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners. What do most of these commercials have in common?

 By and large their spokespersons are women. The wording and dynamic of the ads suggest women as the target market. Don’t choosey Mom’s choose Jiff, after all?  And doesn’t Mama got the magic of Clorox2? The women in these commercials are not only cooking, cleaning without any help from their spouse or partner, but they are perfectly made up; at times even wearing cute little aprons and a glimmering pearl necklace. It’s as though the sleazy ad guys from the show Mad Men somehow wandered out of TV land and landed a job with a modern marketing firm. I even watched one ad for a little pink playhouse complete with a washer and dryer, kitchen and baby cradle. Sort of makes you queasy, doesn’t it?

There are, of course as my friend Tina pointed out, the late Oxyclean Spokesman Billy Mayes, Mr. Clean and the Sham-wow guy. But these are exceptions, and if you look Mr. Clean doesn’t really clean anything. He towers over the spokeswoman with a rather menacing if approving facial expression. One person’s target marketing is another person’s latent sexism, I guess.

 Co-columnist Francine Pratt has received some criticism for her observations cautioning against possible instances of racism, and extolling instances of harmony between the races. That she is identifying a rift where none exists, as though civil rights were a non-issue. But aren’t civil rights and liberties ever-evolving precepts? We feel compelled to safeguard the notion or philosophy of “liberty,” so why should we not guard against the erosion of our ancestors’ progress in the arena of civil rights? The anniversary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s first public documents outlining the foundations of suffrage is a time to consider how the present measures up against the past. Whether or not we’ve progressed. Shouldn’t we be closer to the era when choosy parents choose Jiff?