Advertising to Women is Broken

June Cleaver is Julia Baker is Sheryl Sandberg

The advertisement shows a pure white kitchen, into which children, husband and pets splash muddy footprints, colorful drink spills and tomato sauce splatters. A woman shakes her head with a smile and uses a non-resuable paper towel to wipe the spill. The voiceover talks about keeping surfaces clean.

June Cleaver is synonymous in the United States with a former age of family (that arguably never actually existed) in which stay-at-home mothers put on dresses, makeup and pearls to do housework and wait for children and husband to come home and ruin all of their hard work. Advertisements today, in 2013, still presume that women of today are obsessed with June Cleaver’s concerns — clean countertops, whiter whites and snacks for the boys.

The advertisement shows a mother in a mall with two children. She stops, checks her phone and sees a text alert from her bank that she has money in her account. She smiles, and the voiceover says something like, “With XYZ Bank alerts, I know I can get my kids new shoes.”

Julia Baker was the quintessential single mother on American television in the late 60s. June Cleaver’s husband brought home the bacon, she fried it up in the pan. Julia Baker did both, raised a son by herself and, incidentally, handled racism…