Poland launches new TV channel to give housewives a glamorous image | In good health

TVP Kobieta launch video shows pretty slender housewives in a candy-colored family setting with the song A pretty woman on the background. We take a giant bowl of broccoli from the oven, smiling like she just won the lotto. We see another woman, also with a euphoric appearance, at work wearing yellow housekeeping gloves.

The ad has only been online for a few weeks, but the internet is already full of parodies. Not surprising. The spot, which paints an extremely conservative image of women, seems like a parody in itself that catapults us back into the 1950s.

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Correspondent Marc Peirs watched TVP Kobieta’s very first shows on Monday evening. In New facts he discussed the program on Flemish radio 1. Who were the viewers that were presented to them? “A show in the hospital, a romantic comedy or a series on flower arrangements.”

There is of course nothing wrong with the flower arrangement, but what is striking is that only one side of the woman is shown. “That of the woman as a nurse who looks good too,” Peirs says on Radio 1. “All TVP Kobieta presenters have long hair and long legs, are super thin and have an everlasting smile on their faces. their faces.” Belgian-Polish Ewa Dubejko agrees: “It shows a one-sided image of the typical woman and her way of life.”

Also striking: on the same day TVP Kobieta aired for the first time, thousands of striking women took to the streets to protest against the strict new abortion law. “Once again, this proves the enormous polarization in Poland,” says Peirs. “At the same time the station started, the strikers occupied a very important intersection in the center of Warsaw next to the central station. TVP Kobieta’s slogan is “like you”, but in Polish. “Just like you?” said one of the leading figures in the women’s strike while watching the ad. “Not like me, then.” “

“There is definitely a polarization,” says Dubejko. “But on the other hand, women have a lot of say in the household in Poland. I notice this in my environment (with my mother, my grandmother, my mother-in-law and my acquaintances). There was no difference between man and woman at the time, both had to work. But since the PiS came to power and the abortion options were withdrawn, a lot has changed in this area. “

“I must add that a program on women and businesses will also be broadcast once a week,” Peirs nuance. “After Lithuania, Poland has the highest number of female entrepreneurs in the European Union, so this aspect needs to be addressed. The image of the good woman waiting for her husband at home is still very much in the mind. political decision-makers in the Polish government. Government supporters consider that this is a perfectly normal channel. that the channel has an alienating, populist, arch-conservative channel seen by women. “

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