Hills Hoist Clothes Lines: A study in Contradiction

To see the advertisement discussed please visit:
http://www.digitallibrary.com.au/resource/bundle.1/illusionId=9102&c=published&f=image:jpeg/resource/enlarged.jpg%20%7D

Hills Hoist Rotary Clothes Lines may be useful for hanging out washing but sometimes I think they are hanging wool over our eyes. In today’s modern society women are moving further away from their stereotyped role as happy homemakers and men are pulling away from their role as breadwinners. Only the other day I read an article in Australian House and Garden magazine on men staying at home to look after their children while on the 24th June 2010, Australia got its first female Prime Minister. So when I saw an advertising campaign in Burke’s Backyard magazine for Hills Hoist Clothes Lines I took a moment to reflect on the image in the advertisement.

The advertisement depicts a mother and her four to six year old daughter happily hanging out the washing while the presumed husband and son dig in the emerald green grass in the background. The two females are both blonde Caucasians wearing clean and pressed clothes in pink shades and other bright tones. Despite the tedium that is washing, they both have cheerful smiles on their faces oddly reminiscent of someone who has just curled up in a corner with a blanket, a good book and a block of chocolate. Perhaps I am the exception to the rule of hanging out the washing but I have never had much patience with hanging out other people’s underwear and jumpers you know they have only worn once and weren’t even dirty when they went in the washing machine.

The men in the background are similarly portrayed. The man was middle aged, clean shaven, wearing tones of blue and brown and helpfully leaning over his son’s shoulder as the boy digs in the grass. Digging in the lawn struck me as odd. As a child, especially at school or at relatives where the grass was either overgrown in winter or dead in summer, nothing like the emerald green grass in the picture, I was never allowed to actually dig it up. Therefore I must conclude that the men are not involved in domestic tasks as they are not helping the two females. This advertisement insinuates that women, in today’s modern society perform the domestic tasks like washing and that men are not involved in any of these ‘chores’. This common stereotype is reinforced by the character, Offred’s Mother in the book The Handmaid’s Tale who protests for women’s rights with banners like “do you believe a women’s place is on the kitchen table?”.Julia Gillard obviously didn’t think so and now she is leading the country. My father spent fifteen years as a stay at home dad and I can still remember coming home on a Tuesday and going to bed in a made bed (for once) because he had washed all the sheets. I believe this advertisement is attempting to hang the wool over Australians eyes and make us believe that it is a women’s job to do the washing, no matter how old they are or whether men are nearby.