Thursday, February 28, 2008

Jane Says Every Mum Is Worth It

Talking of women's matters, I had the deeply unpleasant experience last night of catching Jane Fonda's special Mother's Day commercial for her current paymasters, L'Oréal. With its manipulative blending of mushy sentimentality and faux-tough, quasi-feminist 'Hey look at me, I got older, I'm a grandmother, but that's OK' message (Yes Jane, you're OK because you're a film star with lots of money, good genes and an ego the size of California), its cheesy, grovellingly flattering camerawork and toe-curling 'Every mum is worth it' payoff, I think it was perhaps the most completely nauseating ad I've ever seen. There was a website addresss too, which, to protect bloggers' sensibilities, I shall not present as a link - www.everymumisworthit.com.

7 comments:

  1. I somehow still imagine Mum's Sunday as little children by the bedside holding a small box of milk tray and a hand-drawn card... when did overpriced moisturizer come into it? And grannies! What perversity! And whatever happened to Nadine Baggott?

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  2. When she says 'every mum is worth it', would that include Rosemary West, for example?

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  3. Funnily enough, Elberry, that's precisely the conclusion Holy Moly came to when presented with this year's shortlist for Mum of the Year. It reads like the Priory's guest book.

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  4. So no jokes about old bags much in the news today, then. Have you checked the list of ingredients in some of these creams? Jane Fonda types would likely be outraged if told that a single one of them was in their mineral water or salad.

    As for being worth it, the reality is the queue at Boots and then dealing with Fat Mandy, bored and distracted, on the till. We're all worth a lot more than that. Still, the ad sounds right up there with Moto-Gucci McGregor's warblings about Davidoff Aftershave.

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  5. And don't forget that the pic is touched up. Digitally enhanced I think they call it these days.

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  6. Read today that 50-year-old women are becoming anorexic and retired people are becoming alcoholics. Still, there's always something to live for...

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