The Motrin Ad that was taken down because the mommies complained
I first noticed this as an example of social media going very wrong… for the company. I was going to blog it on my other (business) blog about Social Media I thought it was something terrible and then I watched the ad…. and can’t for the life of me work out what the problem is. THIS is what the mommies were getting all hot under the collar about? My childfree me thought… worth a blog here.
Apparently, if you believe the Twitter streams, the mommies got annoyed because Motrin seemed to be implying that wearing a baby in a sling is a “fashion statement” or that “Motrin is somehow attacking their right to wear their baby..”
What?? I’ve tried but I can’t see what the fuss is about. And anyway, aren’t babies being pushed as the must-have accessory anyway? One that no woman is complete without 
Motrin, apologized profusely and took down all their ads… everywhere. Aren’t there better things to protest over? Like the fact a baby was abused and killed. Never saw any Twittering about that news…
Some people need to chill and find other things to worry about… life is far too short.
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t understand what the fuss was about. Are mommies complaining because the ad paints a realistic side effect of slinging babies (eg: backache?) and that alters the wanted images of sacrifice and selflessness? I’m a bit stumped here.
The dumbest ad I ever remember was the whole “Have a happy period” ones- can’t even remember the brand of tampons being pushed, but the idea that I’d be bleeding happily was about as logical as this opposition.
I read about this in my other life, too. I was catching up on social media stuff – I work in marketing/PR.
Anyway, I think it garnered a whole lot of publicity for them. All the Mom’s are talking about Motrin…and I bet quite a few of them will remember to pick some up on the way home.
I’m a cynical sort. No publicity is bad publicity and I don’t think Motrin is all that sorry behind the closed doors of the PR dept
.
I watched a related video on YouTube, the “Outraged baby-wearing Momma responds to new Motrin campaign”, I had to laugh when that woman says “there are no words to describe how disturbing this commercial is”. Gosh, if that’s the most disturbing thing she saw all day, she lives in a pretty perfect world!
I think that the commercial was a little tounge-in-cheek but it was only speaking truth! If you carry around your baby AFTER birth (don’t most mom’s have backache’s etc. while pregnant?) and after it’s grown 5, 10 pounds heavier of COURSE you’re going to hurt! Motrin is a company that makes a product that stops that kind of hurting. Seems like a logical pitch to me. I think that society is very against telling the truth even though we think we should. The sugar-coating of ‘not hurting while wearing your baby” (‘wearing your baby’ is a disturbing sentence to me incidently) or the sugar-coating of how great having a kid is or how all the pain of childbirth is instantly forgotten….seems like a theme here.
On a slightly different note, I am new to the ‘child-free’ concept and am SO glad to have found people who understand and support my decision! I always knew I didn’t want kids but I didn’t know that there was a term for it and others who thought the same things. I’ve laughed reading all the reasons I read for not having kids and almost all of them were exactly my thoughts too. I found some new reasons as well! Thanks a bunch for the great blog and conversations, I feel less alone and I’m glad to have the resource. I am a Boxer Mom forever!!
I thought the ad was brilliant, and so did my parents. My mother, of all people, put it best: it’s a swipe, without anesthetic, at the balls of two of the great moomy myths. (1) That more baby is always good and welcome, and (2) the closely related myth that everything mothers do is because they are sooo selfless and giving. It also takes the piss out of a group which likes to think that because it has, to put it bluntly, sat on an ejaculating penis, that they are somehow above satire. I saw it on Feministing first, and the comments were vicious, especially towards the one poster who dared to dissent.
It’s good to be childfree, especially since I know that I’ll never be the kind who sleepwalks into parenthood and then feels put upon and discriminated against because no one is kissing their asses and giving them an easier time because of the CHOICES they have made, and because someone dares to poke fun at them. You’d have to see yourself in this ad to get worked up about it.
I saw it on Feministing first, and the comments were vicious, especially towards the one poster who dared to dissent.
______________________________________________________________
Yes, I am that one dissenting poster. It saddens me that the women’s movement/feminism has morphed into the mommy movement/mommyism. I think I held my own pretty well, but those women on that forum who were attacking me (calling me offensive…and obviously my ideas were offensive to them) manage to embody positively every negative stereotype about feminsists and they have no insight into that whatsoever. Many of the posters seem to be the kind of women who spend most of their day looking for things to go on their website and bitch about. There is an old saying: when all you have is a hammer everything starts looking like a nail. I am a feminist, but not a victim feminist. Of course, if I dare make fun of a certain type of modern mother that definitely exists out there that proves to them I cannot possibly be a feminist. Now, many times they bring up very valid points worthy of discussion. However, they are very knee jerk in their reactions. Dare I say, hysterical?
Crumpet: You have my admiration and sympathy. Those posters completely overrode any good points they had with their whining and victim complex (apparently one ad means that mothers are discriminated against) and belief that the one person who wasn’t offended was judging their lifestyle and parenting abilities.
Again, if you take it that personally, it’s probably hit the nail on the head. That is not what feminism should be.
Crumpet: Welcome to the club. I got it from everybody over at Feministing when I dared to espouse the apparently foreign notion that women should be able to afford food, clothing, and shelter for their offspring before they produce them.
I’m old enough to remember when one of the stereotypes ascribed to feminists was that they didn’t have any kids. No more. Oh no. Not with groups like momsrising. Now, it seems that feminism, or at least the branch of feminism embraced by most of those at Feministing, is all about society doing everything possible to cater to and worship women who are pregnant and/or have children, whereas my brand of feminism takes a much more educational stance. I believe in working towards making sure that women are fully educated as to what it takes to raise a child and how to avoid pregnancy in the event she opts out of motherhood entirely or just wants to postpone it until, GASP, she can afford to raise any kids she might have.
Sorry I went off on a tangent there, but the women at Feministing are some of the most closed-minded, unenlightened people I’ve had the misfortune of trying to have a discussion with. It doesn’t matter how well-reasoned and intelligent your argument is…if it doesn’t involve “mothers are the greatest and should be handed everything they could possible want on silver, gold, and platinum platters” then forget it. You will be stoned at dawn. Because, according to them, those of us who have chosen not to have children are still supposed to kowtow to mothers. And we’re supposed to do it willingly and without a negative word spoken. You know, kind of like how all women were treated before feminism.
Emma:
I also supsect that more than a few of the regular posters there are much younger, college aged ‘feminists’ who are parroting a lot of the jumbo they have shoved down their throats in their Womyn’s Studies classes. The less real experience one has in the world the easier it is to believe in all these absolutisms. I corrected someone who said there that ‘feminism is about respecting other women’s choices’. No, it isn’t. It is about women having equal protection under the law and equal access to education and employment opportunities that make it possible to elevate ourselves. I don’t have to respect a woman who chooses to sit on her ass even though she has 2 kids to feed or a woman who lets her fresh out of the pen boyfriend move in with her and her children or one who purposefully oopses a trusting partner in a committed relationship just because she needs to satisfy her wants. Their brand of feminsim seems to me to be more about women taking our turn to be the biggots or oppressors whenever possible and that if any man is treated unjustly they should just suck it up for history’s sake. I disagree and this hurst feminism more than it helps it. You might want to check out Wendy McElroy’s Ifeminist blog. It’s a world apart from the other.
I thought the ad was silly and irritating, like most ads are! I can’t understand why the mommies are so outraged about something so ultimately trivial in the grand scheme of things.
@ Crumpet, Irishgirl, Emma – I’m a sometime lurker at Feministing, and from what I’ve read, Crumpet’s experience is not unusual. Any poster who doesn’t march in step with the others is promptly torn to shreds. I’ve also noticed the snotty attitudes some of the posters have towards any women who are childfree.
As for mommyism, it’s completely overtaken the feminist movement and warped it into something I don’t recognize. Personally, I think there’s something frighteningly regressive about all this mommy worship.
Anyway – sorry to go off on a tangent!
I’m sorry to post yet AGAIN on the topic, but Feministing has a post on a preganant woman in prison. Apparently it doesn’t matter if she’s guilty or not, because she’s a moomy:
Respected Dmitri Anatolevich. I know that the courts in our country are independent. But I am certain that with your will it is fully possible to return a mother to her children. Whether she is guilty or not — that’s not important now. In any case, she has been punished more than enough. And she has already served as an example. But, it is her children who have been punished first of all. Both the two boys who are living without her for the fourth year, and that child that has yet to be born.
Dear-fucking-lord.
^^^^You’re right.
Kids only suffer when mommy gets locked up. They’re just fine when daddy goes to the slammer I suppose. We could argue that locking up men is robbing many families of a primary breadwinner. However, I don’t give a rat’s ass. If he did the crime he can do the time like anyone else and so can mom. Besides, what kind of an example are these parents setting? Wasn’t parenting supposed to make you a better person?
I almost spit out my drink when i saw that post on Feministing about the knocked up inmate. i just don’t get it. Feministing really pisses me off sometimes. Also, BoxerMom, welcome! I remember how thrilled I was when I googled “I don’t want kids” and discovered that there were others just like me!
I think that any one of us stuck with a screeching litter would go a little insane. Who knows what loony blogs we might then post?
I don’t recall hearing any outraged protest from these mommies when a child was tortured and murdered… because – surprise – he was given back to his now locked up mother. no frenzied posting to twitter, no strident blog posts.
Had Baby P been been kept away from this woman, he would still be alive today. Instead, his mother looked on while her child was beaten and eventually killed. But guess what? i guess the mommies would still say the right place for the child was with it’s mommy.
And these women are protesting an advert??!
“It also takes the piss out of a group which likes to think that because it has, to put it bluntly, sat on an ejaculating penis, that they are somehow above satire.”
@Irishgirl – LOL “…Sat on an ejaculating penis…” I laughed so much at that image. That’s classic! And thanks… I went back and watched the ad again after reading your comment and I got it. It’s brilliant. Even more, as you say they had to see themselves in it to get worked up about it…. so funny.
And the thing is, they come across as so whiny and “lacking a lot to do” to find fault with something like this. With everything going on in the world today… boggles the mind.
It’s great to be childfree…
Emma – it seems feminism, as we understand it, has been well and truly hijacked.
I’m so out of touch. I’ve never heard of Feministing and I had no idea that “mommyism” has completely overtaken the feminist movement. This saddens me. I’m a old school feminist I guess– I grew up with “Free to Be… You and Me” …
When did the Mommy’s take over? I’m going over to lurk at Feministing.
Hi all. Crumpet, I just went on to the Feministing website and searched for the comments about the Motrin ad. I’m just dumbfounded at the spitefulness and bitchiness of these women! Wow! I thought it was interesting how they attacked you over some of the stereotype mothers – helicopter parent, mothers basing their whole identity as being a mother – that you mentioned and boy, did their claws come out. I couldn’t believe they interpreted your comments as attacking mothers as a whole. That is how stereotypes come about, because these days there are many of these mother stereotypes raising kids. I interpreted their attitudes/comments towards you as you having struck a nerve and they saw themselves in these stereotypes so rather than face reality they attacked you instead to cover up the fact they recognised themselves.
I’m so very, very sorry, I promise I’ll shut up about it after this, but there was another post on Feministing from some moron patting herself on the back about “family councelling”. She had challenged the idea that “family” = married mom and dad. Fine, but her challenge was based on the idea that lots of people have children, including single parents and gay couples. At no point did she challenge the idea that family = children.
Wow! With all that’s going on in the world and as the U.S. economy is on the brink of disaster with the number of people receiving unemployment benefits and food stamps jumping every month and the auto industry about to tank, which employs a total of about 10 and 12 million people including dependent/related parts suppliers, I find it fascinating in a disturbed way that these women would take the time to trouble themselves over an advertisement. How about some concern for the mom’s who won’t be able to feed their kids/babies because their unemployment benefits ran out? I find their complaints incredibly petty and rather narcissistic. There was an old Saturday Night Live skit where the punch line was, “How does this affect me!” Indeed. And they call child free people selfish.
I had my own real life experience with a baby as “heavy load’ story. Recently, a new couple moved into our building. The woman is about six months pregnant and they have a toddler as well. A couple of weeks ago, the father stopped my husband and I in the hall and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you moving out any time soon?” We just looked at him in perplexed silence. Then he went on to say that his wife was pregnant and they have a small child and she doesn’t want to go up two flights of stairs every day because the new baby will be heavy to carry and they wanted a first floor unit. I’m thinking, Hmm, didn’t she notice the stairs when she moved in and also didn’t she notice she was pregnant. And seeing as she looks to be about 27 and in quite good health, two flights shouldn’t be a hardship as she has a 76 year old woman on the third floor as an example to follow. The real kicker followed, which was would we consider swapping units with them? I just laughed and walked away while my husband kindly gave him a polite answer, which in my opinion, he did not deserve.
I guess that there is no sacrifice too large to be made for those with children if you don’t have any yourself. Sure, I wouldn’t mind incurring the expense and the aggravation of MOVING my entire home, so a TOTAL STRANGER doesn’t suffer inconvenience with her child rearing. For the love of God, what are these people like???? And the final irony is, when I had previously run into stay-at-home mom and asked her how/where her child was she snarled, “He’s taking a nap, thank god!” and stomped away up the stairs. I thought to myself, “Another happy parent and thank goodness, she’s having another”. Did they not know that having children was optional?
Time we had a link to the add cos many people here – like those e.g. me and maybe others who do NOT live in the USA! SO here it is!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XO6SlTUBA38
P.S. I do NOT think the add is offensive AT ALL!!
@ Athena there was always a link to the ad. It’s the very first line in the post. I don’t live in the USA – neither do many others on this blog.
I don’t see anything offensive about the ad.. I thought it was funny. That some mommies got so worked up over this is telling. I don’t think they gained any cred – other than being whiny mommies who don’t seem to have much to do other than whine about advertisements. Read what Irishgirl said in her comment. Very enlightening.
@Lee – you said it! I laughed so much at the “would you consider swapping units with the pregnant parent” story. Didn’t you know we are ALL supposed to subordinate ourselves to the difficulties of child-rearing??