Most of the time I find this kind of thing more laughable than insulting, but this is an exception, up there with Nike’s decision to have a rail-thin, titless man model sports bras. It has long been pointed out that whatever trans (or black, queer, and nonbinary femme) people identify as when they say “woman” is just a cacophony of the shallowest and most air-brained stereotypes of the biological category of adult human females. This is no exception.

If anything, the added layer of domestic labor makes it. . . worse? One of the most foundational aspects of first- and second-wave feminism was getting women out of the captivity of domestic roles and into the workforce, smashing the idea that a woman’s place is necessarily in the home. But Griffin’s performance seems to suggest that being “femme” means being a dutiful, diligent– not to mention ditzy– housewife.

[I’ll skip embedding the ad, but Rachel has it at the link. The ad is subtitled, presumably because the lisp in the voice-over is so prominent that it’s tough to understand what’s being said. I don’t know if that’s an affectation or not, but it makes this man a curious choice for spokesperson. So does his moustache and Van Dyke beard. If this same ad was made by a woman doing exactly this same kind of act, feminists would have climbed all over Lever for perpetrating a 1950s view of womanhood. Their silence now speaks volumes. — Ed]