Hey ladies! When do you feel most liberated and empowered and all those things ladies want? Is it when you bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan? Is it when you tell someone to put a ring on it? Or is it when you do the bestest most stupendous of all lady things, cleaning!
On the box for its new [Swiffer] steamer...the kitchen mopping giant features a sexed-up version of the famous World War II-era Westinghouse poster. Rosie 2.0 is also featured on this online splash page for the product, complete with animated steam. But instead of marveling at the we-can-do-it arm, 21st-century Rosie is brandishing a Swiffer Bissel Steam Boost — a full transformation for a symbol of female strength, now put back in the kitchen, where the suits over at Proctor & Gamble apparently thinks she belongs.
Oh god where do we even begin? With the weird "ladies love them some cleaning" part of this? Or maybe the "cleaning is just as fulfilling as helping build planes during World War II" part of this? Or is it the "ladies are at their toughest when they tackle big household stains" angle. WHY CHOOSE ALL OF THESE ARE TERRIBLE.
God bless the cleaning power of the Internets, which mercifully got this thing laughed out of existence within a day:
Less than a day after the web noticed that Swiffer had drafted Rosie the Riveter for its Steam Boost mop advertising campaign with a glammed up version of the feminist icon, the company has already taken down the product's splash page. "It was not our intention to offend any group with the image, and we are working to make changes to where it is used as quickly as possible," the company said in a statement.
Ladies, ladies! Do not get your panties in a bundle! No one was trying to offend you by co-opting one of the iconic symbols of female liberation and turning it into a way to sell you something that you really need -- a thing to steam your floors?
Actually, we checked, and no one we know needs some sort of steam boost thingy to clean our floors. We clean our floors by draping soiled clothes over said floor, and steaming and mopping that would just be messy. Guess we will never know the sweet sweet freedom-building fuck yeah feeling of the Swiffer Steam Boost.
[Atlantic]
