The Anxiety and Depression Association of America has a lot of opinions about gender roles in childhood ... and it's channeled them into Gender Baby Food, a parody product based on the design of the Gerber brand.
Created by Jiayi Wang and Jennifer Garcia, Gender Baby Food comes in a number of different flavors, including Anti-Gay Grape, Submissive Spinach, Rough and Tough Rhubarb, and—our favorite—Perverted Peas. We aren't sure why that one's in there, really; sexual innuendo is hardly a gendered concept.
Clicking on each flavor brings up fake ad copy and customer reviews that reveal the food's harmful effects on children, based on the gender they're implied to be for. Submissive Spinach, for example, "will teach her all the right ways to respect a man, from knowing that she has no right to question him, to understanding that a silent mouth is the prettiest one."
And that's one of the gentler ones...
Whatever you may think of the tone, Gender Baby Food's delivery is undeniably spot-on. From the graphics to the product and web design, everything is presented effectively, and breadcrumbs lead to a donation page for the ADAA, where the dangers of overemphasizing traditional gender roles to children are explained in greater (and less abstract) detail.
The satire is about as subtle as an oncoming bus, but perhaps this approach is the most prudent one. It's not like decades of being timid about the subject have helped anything.