Mother: The most passionate soccer fan is at home. It’s my son and his father. During every game, their clothes end up getting stained—salsa, drinks, cheese.

Father: No, no. They’re goals!

Mother: Ever since I found Tide pods, which removes 100 stains in one wash, the one who ends up relaxed is me!

Father and Son: Goal, goal!

Mother: Like father, like son.

In this short, but condensed commercial about Tide Pods, the role of Latinx women and men in the household are explicitly shown. The mother is clearly not a part of the bonding experience between the father and the son; she is isolated in the laundry room, folding clothes and getting the stains out of them with a smile on her face.

The father's role in this commercial, although with very little dialogue, is eminently powerful. He symbolizes an ideal man to his son, so his role is to demonstrate how a man should act in the Latinx context. As seen from the son's screams following his father's, the idealistic view of a strong masculinity has already permeated through the son. In order to be like his father, he must shout, make his presence known, and show passion for a sport in which the male's physical abilities are accentuated. The father has achieved his goal of making his son a true man.

When Tide perpetuates these gender role stereotypes, the company fails to see that these are not the roles that actual Latinx families are adopting. In the article “Boyhood to Manhood,” Ruth Zambrana mentions that “almost three decades ago, Lea Ybarra (1982) conducted a study of Mexican American working-class couples in California and found a range of gender roles, with most men participating in household division of labor; that is, helping with domestic chores” (127). Thus, what this commercial is demonstrating might not connect to as many Latinx families because the structure of the household has since changed. Other studies also demonstrate similar results of a shift in male and female responsibilities throughout the household¹.

In this commercial, there is a drawback in the sense that tradition is intact. Similarly to how the previous Progresso commercial demonstrates shift in some aspects of the culture, although keeping the mother's role in the kitchen, this commercial forces the mother to do the household chores. Tide's goal is to show how this woman can still be a traditional Latinx mother figure in a much easier way. In comparison to the previous commercial, it seems to be the same concept—making the tradition much easier to achieve. This need, a very conservative one, could be a response to the pulling of cultures in the U.S. The more time spent in the U.S., the more that families adapt to its culture, and the more they may contest and reject traditional roles.

Tide is creating a product that facilitates the perpetuations of traditional conservative gender roles in the everyday life sphere. Instead of promoting the involvement of the entire family in house chores, with the "help" of Tide, the mother must stay as the main caretaker for anything that the rest of the family needs at home, while the father reaps the fruit of his labor and in the meantime, shapes his son's masculinity.




1. Zambrana adds that “Although household division of labor is higher among professional couples than working-class couples regardless of race/ethnicity, the myth of Latino males as authoritarian patriarchs has been repeatedly disproved (de la Torre 1993; Gonzalez 1996; Mirande 1997; Pesquera 1993)” (127).