Let's talk about families. Tolstoy famously stated that all happy families are alike. In his mind he may have pictured the classic family unit: mother, father, a handful of little Cossacks. Today, it seems that families can be happy in entirely different ways - an idea that even advertising has embraced. In Chevrolet's "The New Us" campaign, the American car giant depicts all kinds of different families: single parent, reconstituted, interracial, same sex...all happy in their own way. Even Banana Republic has come out and accepted that a cool American couple doesn't have to mean an athletic guy and a blonde girl. Its latest campaign features a handsome gay couple looking perfectly content.
It's also a relief to discover that families don't have to be perfect. Just look at les Dumas here in France. Or last year's ad for McDonald's in the UK, which featured a son who is suspicious of his divorced mother's boyfriend - who has just moved in to their home. Until the interloper takes him for a bonding burger and fries, of course.
This doesn't mean everyone outside adland has changed. There was some alarming criticism in the US of a Cheerios ad featuring an interracial family - white mom, black dad, little girl. But the brand defied the racists and ran a new spot that went right on depicting its family as normal. Normal, funny, and to quote Tolstoy and Pharrell Williams, happy.
