Mcgowan: Kix Cereal and a Changed Culture
by Richard McGowan, Ph.D.
I intend to explain what a synecdoche is, but first a story about a box of cereal.
About 35 years ago, my oldest son, Cassidy, ate a bowl of Kix for breakfast. For those unacquainted with the cereal, a box of Kix contains corn-flavored balls, not flakes, appropriate to eat with milk and sugar. I ate the same cereal in the 1950s when I was a child.
=He was just learning to read and the box of Kix was in front of him, so he perused it.
“Hey Dad, look at this.” He pointed to the box, where it read “Kid-Tested, Mother-Approved,” a slogan General Mills adopted for the cereal in 1978.
My son knew that I was aware of exclusionary language and he was also well aware that I was the principal care-provider for him and his two brothers. “Shouldn’t it say, ‘father-approved,’ too?”
I don’t know if my 10 year-old son asked just to see a strong reaction to the General Mills brand of exclusion or if he was puzzling out why a company would leave out one of the parents. In his case, the parent who made his lunch each morning, got him and his brothers ready for school, and greeted him as he got off the bus.
“Maybe you should write a letter to the people who make that cereal. What do you think?” I asked.
“That’s a good idea.” So we got out pencil and paper. We talked about what he should say and then he wrote a letter to the company. General Mills replied, “explaining” that the company could only make claims based on proof that mothers approved of their children eating Kix, as though that put an end to the matter of exclusion.
The company did not explain why it did not gather proof about how fathers thought of the cereal, however . . . if a company ignores fathers on the packaging, a company will have likely ignored fathers in the gathering of proof.
And in the grand scheme of things, maybe the omission of ‘fathers’ on the box is de minimis, an omission so small as to be insignificant. I think it was a synecdoche, a small thing that reveals a larger thing, a little detail that shows how fathers were understood.
Given the history of childcustody rulings, Kix accurately represented our culture’s view of fathers inasmuch as they were insignificant (or bumbling in the case of Homer Simpson). Of course, given the more radical elements of feminism, fathers could be dealt away with altogether. As one loud feminist voice (Sara Ruddick) asserted, “If you take care of children on a daily basis, you are a mother no matter what your sex,” a remark insulting to parents, both men and women.
At about the same time, Bobby Knight was kicking or throwing chairs. The Star wondered why “any mother would allow her son to play for him.” Because, after all, fathers uniformly approve of that kind of behavior and certainly have no feelings one way or the other about childcare.
The way Kix excluded men is a small thing, but it reveals the whole attitude toward fathers in the 1980s and 90s and into the 2000s.
Just the other day, though, my oldest son texted a message, accompanied by a picture, to his Mom, his brothers, and me. The text said, “We did it,” with a photo of Kix cereal. The box stated, “Kid-tested, Parent-approved,” a change made in 2018. By then we had no children in the house so I missed the re-tooled slogan.
It took 40 years for General Mills to include fathers on its cereal’s packaging. The change in language is a small thing, but a possible synecdoche, portending inclusivity and individuals being treated as individuals. That would be a big thing.
I’m not entirely optimistic the way my children are, having lived through the heightened application of affirmative action and having experienced the malevolence of rabid feminism.
But at least children can now read that Kix is “parent-approved.” As my youngest son advised, “Take the win, Dad.”
His advice is forward-looking and upbeat.
Richard McGowan, Ph.D., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, has taught philosophy and ethics cores for more than 40 years, most recently at Butler University. Research citations for Dr. McGowan’s articles are available at www.inpolicy.org.
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