Sure, I personally am terminally cautious and aesthetically unadventurous – but I’m the exception
“T
hese aren’t your mother’s pantyhose,” I read recently on the New York magazine website, then I scrolled on, because the word “pantyhose” gives me the ick and I’m not planning to layer pink Gucci pop socks over purple tights any time soon. Still, something about it snagged in my brain and I’ve found myself brooding about that expression and how it gets used.
That “not your [family member]’s” formula entered the vernacular in a 1988 US car ad, when it was directed at dads: “Not your father’s Oldsmobile”. Now, though, it seems mostly to have defaulted to mothers. It’s a lazy marketing brag or headline, a shorthand for new, directional and disruptive, and I’ve started to hate it.
I’m not usually actively angered by reflexive sexism and ageism; I tend to let it wash over me in a dispiriting wave. And I don’t, actually, feel personally slighted by the expression. I am, indeed, a mother who is also terminally cautious and aesthetically unadventurous. Whatever you’re marketing (unless it’s “fire” or “the wheel”) is likely to be more edgy and innovative than I’m comfortable with.
