Female Homemakers and Consumption: the Role of the ‘New Woman’ at Home

“That Sucks!”

Female Homemakers and Consumption:

The Role of the ‘New Woman’ at Home

The first trickles of soil drop into the living room through a hole in the ceiling, startling the couple. The man puts down the newspapers he is reading. He peels off plaster around the hole to investigate this unexplained incident. More soil pours through the hole. The woman puts down the fork she is wiping and joins her husband, just as a huge deluge of soil pours inside. The couple gets more excited and eagerly searches for ways to reach deeper into the gaping hole as the soil now pours relentlessly into the once tidy living room. The man is finally seen supporting the woman on his shoulders as he helps her deeper into the ceiling. The scene changes to a field, where the woman suddenly emerges from the ground beneath the grassy undergrowth and comes face to face with a gravestone inscribed, “Here lie Mr and Mrs Honig. Bored to death.” She sighs an audible, “That sucks!”, before turning around to see a giant building in the all-so-familiar shades of blue and yellow of the famous furniture powerhouse: an IKEA store. Cheery music picks up in the background and doves fly towards the building before the IKEA commercial finally ends with their campaign slogan, “Live Unböring”.

The 2003 commercial aims to nudge viewers to buy IKEA products to not lead a boring life. By having the woman eventually emerge from underground to see the brightly-coloured IKEA store, the commercial suggests that IKEA relieves women of boredom. The surprise on the woman’s face when she reads the words on the gravestone indicates that the couple are actually Mr and Mrs Honig who have been, or appeared to be, buried underground due to boredom. One striking oddity arises in the commercial – it does not showcase any IKEA household products, but instead seems to focus on the eagerness of the woman in reaching further into the ceiling amidst the deluge of...