Consider a Kitchen Aid ad from 2013. In between glossy images of the mixer itself, the ability to make your own healthy food—made of quality ingredients and preservative-free—is emphasized, as is preparation skill and social activity: “…new knife skills… a fish you’ve never bought before… host Moroccan night.” Here is a similar advertisement, which includes a close-up shot of a vacuum cleaner at the very beginning which reinforces domestic labor and the domestic domain:
With all the hubbub about obesity in America, there is a renewed focus on everything from increasing access to fresh vegetables to making sure that kids and adults get more physical activity. Despite the many arguments that it is institutional factors such as access to poor nutrition and lack of access to physical activity at school, or built-environment factors such as outside areas in which it is physically unsafe to run or walk or play, the responsibility for health is placed intensely on individuals. In part, this is because American society is highly individualistic. This is part of the problem: that the responsibility for change is misplaced when it falls only on individuals’ shoulders. Another part is upon whose shoulders it often falls. Women—whether as mothers, wives, daughters, or partners—are far more likely than fathers to be held responsible for their family’s health status. This is chronicled in a 2010 Time article called Lady Madonna and numerous other sources. Now let’s think again about the Kitchen Aid ad. The only person seen preparing food is an adult woman (it is a small miracle in advertising that she is a woman of color). Men appear solely as consumers of the healthy, preservative-free, homemade food.
Consider now how truly misguided it is to place responsibility for nutrition, physical activity, or obesity primarily on any individual, much less disproportionately on women.
