Ok. It’s a silly commercial. But I can't resist. My favorite line is:
When it’s a number two, I look like number one.
All the women, and even the men, stare at this little studmuffin. And what makes this baby so cool?
A diaper.
It’s hard to take such a humorous commercial seriously. But it’s funny because it’s true. Mainstream culture tells us a message, and we hear that message from birth to death. The message says that in order to be accepted, you must look and behave a certain way. You must buy certain clothing, drive a particular car, live in a certain neighborhood, and, apparently, poo in blue diapers.
The commercial works so well because it points to the mechanism of human desire. Our desires are always formed by others. Rene Girard explained the human formula of desire in his book Deceit, Desire and the Novel, saying that humans “desire according to Another” (page 4). This Huggies commercial plays on Girard’s principle of desire in order to sell these limited edition diaper jeans. It attempts to give parents a desire for the diapers. First, it tells parents that they want their baby to look cool. Then it tells parents that in order for their baby to look cool, they need to buy Huggies Jean diapers. Thus, we desire according to the desire of another.
You may begin to think, “Well, I don’t desire according to the desires of another. I don’t want my baby to wear jean diapers!” This is an understandable response to the argument I’m making, but it is still based on the same principle of desire. It is a desire formed in opposition to the other and in denial of our dependence on one another. But the fact remains, a desire formed in opposition to the other is still a desire that is based on the other.
To tell you the truth, I don’t want my boys wearing jean diapers. I don’t even care if they look “cool.” In fact, I’d rather they grow up to be caring and compassionate human beings. I want them to avoid the narcissistic message of our culture that pines for the attention of others. And yet, the desire I have for my children was a desire that my parents had for me. They were much more concerned with the way I treated people than with the type of clothes I wore. That desire was given to me by my parents. So, I desire for my children what my parents desired for me.
Our desires are always formed and given to us by others. We can’t escape that mechanism. Once we are aware of that fact, we can allow ourselves to be formed by the desires of certain others. Freedom comes when we acknowledge our dependence on others. When we acknowledge that dependence, our relationships can grow in the spirit of peace and cooperation.
Then we can all look like number one. Trust me, the alternative is much worse.
