#MOTHERHOODWITHOUTJUDGMENT: negotiations of meanings of guilt and maternal love among consumers of O Boticário

Abstract

This article explores interpretations of the meanings related to the Motherhood Without Judgment campaign, launched in 2022 by the brand O Boticário. The proposal is to discuss how advertising enables the study of the circulation of meanings about motherhood, mothering, and their consequences in women’s lives, considering the context and sociocultural values. The social representations and the encoding/decoding model of Stuart Hall (2009) underlies the theoretical and methodological framework applied in the interpretative analysis. The empirical material consists of 92 Instagram posts. Results indicate that the advertising discourse interacts with consumers in a discursive space, where the hegemonic sense of patriarchal motherhood prevails. We also observed objections and the production of a political view of motherhood and mothering, which questions the social structure and gender, race, and class inequalities.

Keywords
Advertising; Motherhood; Maternal guilt; Consumer culture