By Jeremy Sabitt
Some time in the not too distant
past, about a couple weeks or so, I was sitting in my living room, watching the
TV box, when a Cheerios commercial came onto the screen. In this commercial, I
remembered an interaction between a father and son, a seamless interaction of
white, middle-class life, and the commercial ended with the same message that
had been conveyed to me as a child watching a smaller, but bulkier TV box, that
somehow eating Cheerios could increase my heart health more than any other
cereal. When walking through the grocery store as a “health-conscious” consumer
at a much younger age, the box of Cheerios was hard to miss as a “healthy”
option, featuring a giant, red, heart-shaped bowl, filled with Cheerios, but
also strawberries, set against a background of a simple yellow, with black
lettering at the top to assure the consumer that the O-shaped cereal in a heart-shaped
bowl is, in fact, Cheerios, although we don’t have to be reminded of that
anymore. Everyone knows Cheerios as the O-shaped, healthy option for cereal,
unless it is a knock-off cereal that also used the O-shape, and additionally, this
particular cereal has also somehow been able to become synonymous with heart
health. Is it simply adding fruit to the box? Or is it the heart-shaped bowl in
such stark, in your face, red that really blends with the strawberries and
evokes messages of healthiness? Other mainstream cereals, such as Life, Special
K, and Total feature fruit on the cover of their cereal box, also to imply a
certain healthiness, while still providing the consumer with enough sugar to
properly start their day. Other cereals such as Fiber One, Ezekiel, and Kashi
are known to be even healthier and less sugary, and also feature fruit on their
boxes.
The myth of nutritional value in
these products, as instruments of a simple, formulaic design to health, implies
that eating cereal completes a healthy, “complete” breakfast and specifically,
in the case of Cheerios, that eating or consuming that cereal will equate to
heart health. This myth of nutritional value is present within all of the
cereals, from Froot Loops to Cap’n Crunch, that they are required for a
“complete” breakfast, and to put one on the road to a healthy day. Never mind
the immense levels of sugar pumping through the children of Cap’n Crunch, the
“part of a good breakfast,” or “part of a complete breakfast” slogan heard at
the end of their commercials suggests that juice, milk, toast with butter, and
cereal, are the determinants to the formula for health, along with a little
fruit, either on the side or in the cereal. The leprechaun and rabbit cartoons
are justified by this myth of health within breakfast cereal, veiling the true
nature of the exploitation of children to consume sugary, mass-produced
products at the approval of their parents. Do they approve in the name of
health? Or maybe trust. On a deeper level, the myth of nutritional value within
these cereals, especially the mainstream General Mills products marketed to
children, the “part of a complete breakfast,” is wrapped within a larger myth
in the trust placed in food corporations to provide consumers with healthy,
mass-produced options. Or more generally, this myth is wrapped within the even larger
myth of trust in corporations to hold the interests of the consumer at a higher
priority than profits.
When I searched for the specific
Cheerios commercial on Google, the first three results seemed to validate the
devotion of the Cheerios marketers to the myths stated above. The first result
was a 30 second commercial of seemingly homemade videos of babies, or families
with babies. Each snippet was no longer than 5 seconds. The extent to which
Cheerios were featured in the 30 second ad was no more than a single Cheerio on
one little girl’s nose, shown for all but a second, and another baby playing
with a high-chair table full of Cheerios, again shown for all but a second. At
one point in the video, the same calm, mellowing yellow backdrops black
lettering that says, “More babies, please.” And then “They’re fun!” As if
eating Cheerios reinforces the life cycle by keeping the consumer, the buyer of
Cheerios, healthy and fully capable of accomplishing the miraculous, and fun,
act of birthing a child. If a consumer wants to continue this cycle of life and
health, it would be in their best interest to consume Cheerios as a hearty
start to a complete breakfast. The ad implores the consumer to make the
sensible decision to stay healthy by buying their products. They seem to be
begging the consumer to stay healthy so that they may have children and give
the world more cute videos of their babies. The ad also seems to be saying,
“It’s fun to be a healthy human, and it’s fun to raise children,” and the two
are in accord with one another. Anyone in their right mind would be crazy not
to accept such a valiant plea to keep themselves healthy from a brand of
mass-produced and processed fiber.
In a similar fashion, the second
commercial that Google chose as one of the top three to display to me as part
of my Google search included videos of children dancing with their respective
fathers, each snippet of video showing a different father dancing with his
son/daughter. Again in this ad there was lacking any concrete connection to
Cheerios, other than the caption at the end of the ad that read, “Healthy
hearts stay young.” So in this ad, the connection is made more concretely
between families and heart health, and both be achieved as a result of choosing
to eat Cheerios, or in the case of this commercial, Honey Nut Cheerios.
Interestingly, adding the Honey Nut to the Cheerios also means a slight shift
in marketing. Suddenly on the boxes of the Honey Nuts a cartoon bee appears,
reminding children that there is in fact a way to be healthy and still consume
a sugary product similar to the likes of Capn’ Crunch, Froot Loops, and Trix.
When I was younger, if I had Honey Nut Cheerios I “knew” I was making a “healthier”
choice than my friend down the street whose parents let him have Reese’s Puffs
Cereal.
Lastly, the third video that was
displayed was the controversial inter-racial family ad that also had a
Huffington Post below it titled “Cheerios Commercial Featuring Mixed Race
Family Gets Racist Backlash,” validating the controversy. However, while I was
about to watch the ad, another ad began to play in another window. This ad was
slightly different than the first two, as the subject family of the ad was consistent
throughout, and the father was actually showcasing traits of good parenting,
beyond dancing and taking videos of his babies. The video on YouTube was
titled, “Father Friendly: Cheerios rated BEST DAD COMMERCIAL EVER.” In the ad,
a father is woken up in a bed alone by his son jumping on him, while wearing a horse
head, asking “Are you awake, dad?,” and jumping incessantly on his outstretched
lap on the posh, white bed with sunlight streaming in. His answer, contrary to
common sense, is to say, “Of course I am,” before complimenting the horse mask,
showcasing his status a cool, modern, progressive father. Throughout the course
of the ad, which lasts slightly over two minutes, this father caters to
different tasks for his children and even gives his wife coffee at one point.
He lifts the headphones off his teenage daughter, but only to compliment her
profile picture on what is assumed to be Facebook or a similar social media
site. The father seamlessly glides through interactions and tasks with his
children and wife, getting the family ready for their busy day as consumers and
contributors to society.
Fittingly, the ad ends with the
#howtodad. The myth of trust in corporations to cover the nutritional concerns
for a bustling, upper class, progressive family by providing adequate products
to enhance their health status and maintain that health so they may continue
being such a productive and stable family is evident throughout the ad and
especially within the hashtag at the end of the video. There is an implication
that it would be so wrong not to buy Cheerios, as a family’s health is surely
more adequately taken care of by consuming Cheerios than otherwise, and only a
father who buys Cheerios for his family is truly a father at all. This puts a
lot of pressure on white, upper-class fathers to provide Cheerios for his
family to ensure them the best opportunity to succeed through providing them
the healthiest cereal, and by providing tools to be an effective father of
middle to upper class values. Otherwise, he might be setting his family up for
heart problems further down in their lives, or he may not live love long enough
himself to continue being such a hip parent and navigator of life to his
children.
When I was raised, it wasn’t within
a home that was exactly “health conscious.” I was vulnerable to the myths of
health and nutritional value as a formulaic design, determined by consuming
certain mass-produced food. When the Jared from Subway craze was just
beginning, I remember asking my mother if I could go on an all-Subway diet. My
mom responded by saying, “You think you can just lose weight by eating Subway
and never doing anything else. That’s not how it works.” I responded by saying,
“Well, it worked for Jared.” This mentality is mythologized to us by corporations
that want us to believe, as consumers, that their products are healthy enough
to sustain us, now and in the future, while satisfying our needs for taste. On
a deeper level, corporations want us to trust in them to have our best
interests at heart. However, the only interest at heart is profits, and specifically
for Cheerios, to achieve profits by convincing us of heart health, on the mere
basis of fiber in their cereal. On the deeper level, it is as though
upper-class families can trust in food corporations to take care of them, as
long as the families keep consuming their products.
In this way, capitalism is reinforced, the
family’s class status remains the same as long as the capitalist society
remains in place, and they keep contributing to society as productive workers
and consumers. As a result of their consumption and labor, the wheel of
capitalism continues churning. Their consumption also directly benefits their
most basic needs as humans, satisfying their most basic need for healthy options
to sustain us now and in the future. In reality, if someone were to eat a bowl
of Cheerios every day, it wouldn’t do all that much for their health if they
also ate McDonald’s every day. But the myths of nutritional value in
mass-produced corporate foods would lead one to believe that a bowl of Cheerios
a day equates to heart health, perhaps as long as they eat it along with the
other determinants of a “complete” breakfast: milk, juice, toast with butter,
and any fruit. Upper middle-class parents, too busy with balancing their
contributions to society as workers and parents, can trust in mass-produced products
from corporations that also benefit from capitalist society to keep them
healthy without having to put in too much effort. All of the effort, we are
assured, is covered by the scientists of the corporation.
Further, consuming Cheerios
increases chances of maintaining health and thusly maintaining familial
position. And don’t we all want to stay alive and keep loving our loved ones? Aren’t
we nothing without family? If we keep eating Cheerios, we just might stay alive
and keep loving. Otherwise, we would risk offending our high values as a
society, which dictates to us to raise a family in the modern, progressive,
upper-class way. The criticisms, or racist backlash, from the Cheerios mixed
race family commercial says it all, although perhaps unintentionally, as the
backlash expressed sarcastic disbelief at a black father staying with his family.
According to Cheerios, if we are to do it right as fathers, we will raise our
children in the upper to middle class and live in accordance with the values
associated with that class. And of course, the progressive, healthy choice is
Cheerios for breakfast. The wheel of capitalism benefits all those who adhere to
it, workers, consumers, and producers. As long as middle to upper class peoples
trust capitalism and the corporations that are at the higher echelons of
capitalist society, they are assured to maintain health and status, and
Cheerios is just the right cereal to start each capitalist day right!
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