Showing posts with label commodification. Show all posts
Showing posts with label commodification. Show all posts

Sunday, May 11, 2008

What do you see in this picture?

I'm fascinated by how pop culture shapes, and is shaped by, our society's view of bioethical issues. Here's the Mother's Day cover of the New Yorker.

It shows a woman peering gooily into a shop window, mooning over a warm and wriggling litter of--wait for it--not puppies, but diapered babies. Meanwhile, her male companion tries to drag her away from the window, eyes rolled heavenward in the universal male posture of "Not this again!"

There's a lot to unpack here, beginning with the idea that women view motherhood the same way they view a new pair of shoes; that men view women's desires to become mothers with the same exasperation as they view the shoe-buying habits some of us have; that babies are like puppies (warm, fuzzy, commodities)....

You can play too! What other assumptions and analogies are implied here?