. . . on why she can’t stop shouting at the ads on TV. Never mind, there’s probably a cream for that . . .
I’M NOT ALLOWED shout at the telly any more. I still do, with regularity. But officially the house rules forbid it. It’s a throwback to Big Brother’s glory days, when my televisual Tourette’s reached its peak and the ban was entered into law.
Reality TV and the ad breaks: these are the flash points. Mostly we record everything, to be watched, even 10 minutes later, using the magical fast-forwarding power of Sky+ to circumnavigate the ads. Yes, we believe in better.
As for “reality” TV, around the same time the No Shouting Bill was being passed, a complementary Well Stop Making Me Watch This Tripe Bill was making its way through the house. It’s a sweeping piece of legislation banning, among other programmes, anything containing the words celebrity, factor or fat; anything from Channel 4’s stable of tastefully titled “documentaries”; and anything involving teenagers, be they fat or skinny, drunk or “on drugs”, godless or god-fearing.
But sometimes the system fails. Mostly in times of hangover. If Come Dine With Me or one of those Now That’s What I Call a Hooker make-over shows don’t get you, the ads will.
“It’s that f**king Fairy Liquid ad again!” A scramble for the remote control. No shouting! “Could someone please tell them men wash dishes too?” Find the bloody pause button. “Fifty-year anniversary my arse . . .”
It’s too late. The beast has been woken. A 20-minute rant follows, the catalyst still frozen on the screen, caught in the act of setting women’s lib back by 50 years or thereabouts. Of course we can’t lay all the blame at Fairy’s door. Plenty of other equally irritating ads can take a share, and as soon as we hit fast-forward we’re sure to see a couple of them whizzing by, fanning the flames now that I’ve warmed to my subject.
There’s Cheryl Cole, telling me how to sort out my weak, limp, lifeless hair. Now it’s some idiot telling me to have a happy period.
Next it’ll be the dreaded bacteria, lurking in my filthy house or absent from the sickly immune systems of my offspring. Won’t somebody please think of the children?
And that’s just the stuff from Proctor Gamble, the Fortune 500 company that overtook Unilever a few years back as the world’s largest consumer-goods company, and that sponsors mums, apparently. All of them. All of the mothers in the world, sponsored by PG. Now there’s a thought.
Over at Unilever, you’ll find Dove, the perfect solution for your dull and dry and dreary skin. It’s making you droop, you know? But that’s ok: so long as we sing about it in a plinky-plonky patronising way to the tune of a children’s song and show some women who might be a size 12, but who are are more likely an eight, then it’s “Real Beauty”, right?
Mitchell and Webb (of Peep Showfame) have a fantastic sketch about sexism in advertising that ends with the line: "Men, shave and get drunk. Because you're already brilliant." Look it up on YouTube. In less than a minute it sums up my anger perfectly, and cracks me up every time. Because if you didn't laugh you'd cry. But don't worry, there's probably a cream for that.
So, of course I’m boycotting Fairy Liquid. It’s not just the 50 years of chaining women to the sink that gets my blood boiling and makes friends and family wish I, rather than the TV, came with a fast-forward button. It’s the fact that five of Proctor Gamble’s 11 directors are female and have all been on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list. Somehow this makes it all the more galling. It’s unlikely they got where they are today washing dishes.
But of course there’s a bottle of the stuff by the sink as I write this. Because of course there are two of us in the house and of course there is no alternative to the housewife’s favourite in the corner shop. Try as I might to buy other brands in bulk, and even though I know those brands carry with them their own trouble and strife, still the Fairy finds its way to mocking me, in its mild green way. What’s the point?
The inevitably of it all – it’s enough to make you to reach for the Marigolds and strangle someone. But who?
And this is the problem with being a consumer. Knowing what you’re buying, and from whom, is a chore. Figuring out the conditions in which it was made or its impact on the environment or local communities is harder still. And convincing yourself that it makes a blind bit of difference anyway is the hardest thing of all.
The enormity of the corporate world makes us impotent. It’s what leaves me bereft of answers when these ad-fuelled frenzies lead to heated debates, where the merits of a one-woman semi-boycott of a billion-dollar corporation are called into question. What does it matter which washing-up liquid you buy? Who cares where you buy your clothes: cheap or expensive, they’re probably all made in the same sweatshops anyway, right? And sure how would you ever find out? And people are skint, what do you expect from them?
The argument boils down to this: if you can’t fix everything, why bother fixing anything? It’s an attractive hypothesis, and it’s pervasive. And completely understandable. No one wants to hear about problems they are powerless to fix, whether those problems relate to gender-biased ads, or fighting our way out of recession, or addressing the crisis in the church, or sending aid to Africa. And so the blinkers go on and the apathy kicks in and before you know it you’re gazing out the kitchen window, humming something about hands that do dishes being soft as your face.
Róisín Ingle is on annual leave
