How do you define yourself?
Are you a gung-ho executive? Do you like to
cook, to read, to play tennis?
Because no matter your hobbies or
lifestyle, you can find a My Family sticker that sums you up in its own
special, stick-figurey way.
There is no minority overlooked. There are
farmers, soldiers, mums in wheelchairs, even a wild-looking lady with a wine glass.
Which begs the question: given the options,
why is it that so many women, in fact, the overwhelming majority of My Family
sticker-owning women (scientific research conducted by me from my car window),
define themselves as… shoppers.
Over the last few years, since the My
Family stickers exploded onto our roads to distract us during long car trips, I
have been puzzling over this phenomenon. Most of the mothers in the family
line-up are clutching shopping bags. I don’t think they are supposed to be
representative of boring, old supermarket bags either. There is a joi-de-vivre
about this figure that suggests she is on a spending spree at the mall, not
buying the weekly family supplies.
I think what most disturbs me is not just
that a lot of women like shopping. It’s that they feel comfortable proclaiming
to the world: this is me.
And it’s not just in Australia. This
majority holds true even here in the Middle East. (Although, I suppose if I
didn’t want to hang around a bunch of women who defined themselves as
‘shoppers’, I shouldn’t have moved to Dubai.)
Evidence from the My Family website
supports my observation. Shopping mum is their number one selling product,
rated even higher on their website’s ‘most popular’ search than the generic ‘My
Family’ sticker that goes underneath the figures on your rear window.
Interestingly, cats and dogs are more
popular than any of the various children, although that may be because children
have more hobbies than the average Rover or Fluffy, thereby splitting the sales
between several common activities. Maybe we should lobby for stickers showing
‘dog catching ball’ or ‘cat on roller skates’, just to be fair.
Among other mothers, shopping mum is
followed by two plain mums doing nothing, then one holding a laptop and phone,
and then one with a pile of books (finally!).
Among the dads, the one at the barbecue (holding
a beer) takes line honours, which I think is an encouraging sign that men are
sharing the cooking at home (ha!). After that is a generic, do-nothing dad,
then a home handy-man figure, followed by one holding a laptop. You gotta laugh
– the laptop mum also juggles a phone at her ear but the My Family manufacturers
must have not wanted to confuse poor laptop dad with too many things to do at
once.
The girls’ stickers show ballet girl as the
most popular among the little kiddies, which is fine (better than fine in my
opinion), but the biggest selling older girl takes after her mum, with a phone
and a handbag (uh oh). Talking and shopping are things we all do, to a greater
or lesser degree, not a hobby. Someone should tell our daughters.
And what do boys do most? Well, apparently
more of them play xbox than anything else.
Does anyone else find all this worrying?
When I was a kid, my mum painted in oils,
my friend’s mum played tennis and I knew another mum who played guitar. None of
them made shopping their principle leisure activity, nor did they eschew the whole of human
culture to define themselves by what they could consume.
Personally, I don’t have My Family stickers
on my car, but if I did I would like to design my own. I would have several
arms like Shiva, holding books, a Bible, a paint brush, a coffee cup, a
gardening fork and a mixing spoon, as my body strikes a yoga pose while
standing on a beach. Confusing? No, just the fully rounded human being we all
really are.
Don’t sell yourselves short, ladies.
Thoughts?
