The Maternal in the City: Outdoor Advertising Representations in Shanghai and London

Abstract

This article examines representations of mothers in Shanghai and London outdoor advertising. We treat their display of motherhood as a regulatory space where ideas about the maternal and fantasies of the “good life” under neoliberal rationality are formulated and normalized. Situating Shanghai and London outdoor advertisements within their respective media cultures, we identify two common themes: (a) mothers as self‐responsible individuals managing the family, and (b) public display of maternity and intimate family life. We discuss similarities and differences in depictions of motherhood and the purportedly normative ideas about the “good life” they suggest. We argue that outdoor advertising acts as a visual disciplinary space regulating fantasies of the “good life” that millions of city dwellers consume, but rarely realize.

Digitally-mediated parent–baby touch and the formation of subjectivities

“…The marketing and use of Owlet sets out to attach parents to particular touch practices, which in turn mould parental conduct, certain capacities and qualities. We suggest these touch practices connect with parental identities with a notion of the ‘good’ parent, particularly the entrepreneurial, free, autonomous and self-regulating ‘good’ mother demanded by Neoliberalism (Orgad and Meng, 2017). In this context, Owlet served to naturalize and internalize surveillance within some of the participants in the home study, reflecting the self-monitored and self-disciplined subject produced through neoliberalism tied to consumer culture.…”

“…Owlet, we argue, is a technological means to direct parent–baby attitudes and conduct. Owlet advertising imagery is a technic, creating a disciplinary space, which works to construct and normalize imaginations of ‘good’ parent–baby touch and bodies, and ‘successful’ parents through neoliberal rationality and the display of parenthood as a regulatory space linked to consumer culture (Orgad and Meng, 2017). The study findings suggest the design potential of Owlet to: reconfigure the spatiality of parent–baby relations – although this was resisted by some; encourage, standardize and normalize touch practices; and promote (market) new senses of remote ‘touch’ and connection.…”

When Anxious Mothers Meet Social Media: Wechat, Motherhood and the Imaginary of the Good Life

“…Secondly, the unevenness of neoliberalization, coupled with the existing social inequality in China, means that some populations have encountered and internalized neoliberal logic more than others. Elsewhere I have examined how middle-class mothers in Shanghai are frequently interpellated by advertisements in urban public space to act as savvy, responsible consumers who make the right decisions to maximize the welfare of the family (Orgad and Meng 2017). The exponential growth of WeChat in recent years as part of the daily information infrastructure of urban life has created a new space for the production and circulation of discourses that articulate the "common senses" (Hall and O'Shea 2013) of mothering and motherhood.…”

Experimental insights into the socio-cognitive effects of viewing materialistic media messages on welfare support

“…First, over the last thirty years, UK commercial media have become omnipresent and now by in large present Britons with a near constant stream of implicit and explicit evocations, correlates, and signifiers of materialism (McGuigan, 2010;Orgad & Meng, 2017). Since 1986, for example, coverage of celebrities living extravagant lives has skyrocketed across all broadsheets and daily tabloids, which circulate in the millions (O'Neil, 2012).…”

“…Since 1986, for example, coverage of celebrities living extravagant lives has skyrocketed across all broadsheets and daily tabloids, which circulate in the millions (O'Neil, 2012). Moreover, the average Briton is currently exposed to 71 outdoor advertisements a day, most of which promote aspirational products and lifestyles (Orgad & Meng, 2017). Hence, it stands to reason that some proportion of Britons will hold materialism schemas that have been chronically instantiated and consequently cultivated to some meaningful extent by long-term exposure to MMMs, given that in the UK, this exposure is virtually impossible to fully avoid.…”