How Coca-Cola Trains Moms to Eat Shit

Driving down the 101 today, I heard the weirdest commercial on the radio hailing me as a mother and telling me that my maternal duty is to pull off the highway, go to the nearest store and buy my non-existent sons Powerade.

Good moms, familiar Football Man Lee Corso says, provide their families with an assortment of Coke products each weekend for the Big Game. They make sure great snack opportunities happen. They are the true heroes of Football Day.

I wish I could find this radio ad for you. You might have heard it. (If anyone finds a clip of it, please let me know.)

But I did find the next best thing, which is Coke’s “Not So Fast, Mom” online campaign:

“The real playmaker isn’t between dashes. No, she’s pushing a cart around Walmart. Putting Coca-cola on ice. And filling a cooler of Powerade for the kids,” says sportscaster Lee Corso. “She’s the game-changer at every game. Making sure everything is just right. So, Mom? Be the playmaker at every game.”

Coke’s “not so fast, mom” campaign is an ideological training video. It interpellates mothers to feel as though their highest calling in life is to bow down and eat shit every week for the Football Man.

God made Sunday a day of rest — but not anymore!

Or at least not for Mom!

Maybe never for Mom!

Haha, God hates Mom.

Eat shit, Mom.

No, every week for roughly five long months, Mom is expected to make sure Sunday is a great day for her boys. And Coke created this ad campaign to tell her just how to do to that in third-grade level directives:

Push that cart. Buy that soda.

Good Mommy!

Good girl!

That’s it.

Do you need more help, Mom? Coke has prepared a bunch of whimsical decoration ideas that you can spend all week preparing to demonstrate your love and affection for your family. Then, after they ignore your efforts, you can post your hard work on Facebook — where all middle-class white women eventually go to seek validation for the shit they do for the men in their lives.

What upsets me most about this campaign is that it’s entraining women to conflate eating shit with heroism.

And in a weird way, in the dynamic of the American Football Family, she is the hero. Love isn’t emotions. Love is buying shit. Any 8-year-old who hears this ad on the radio is going to think he has a bad mom now because Lee Corso told him that Good Moms buy Coke and Powerade. Bad moms say no.

Because right now, this is what the Football Man does. The Football Man makes demands and America listens. The Football Man needs you you buy Coke. The Football Man needs you to cheer. The Football Man needs you to stand. The Football Man needs you to sit down. The Football Man needs you to feel. The Football Man needs you to contain your feeling.

American Football is ritualized docility. Sure, it seems violent, but the spectacle is contained in a screen. Only Black men really run the risks of concussion— everyone else gets to have a good time with Coke!

But what about Mom?! How does the Football Man program her?

Coca-Cola and Walmart have teamed up to make sure that mom works all week in the service of the Football Man. Do this, these ads say, or else the Boy’s Big Day will be ruined and it’ll be your fault.

Buy this, Mom, or else your husband and sons won’t hug.

You don’t want to be the mom that deprived your family of hugging, do you?

Don’t forget the chips.

Because Mom has to be the playmaker at every game, says the Football Man.

Haha, you thought you were liberated, Mom.