Can every baby be a Gerber Baby?

February 14, 2023 11:58 AM

A century of American baby contests and eugenics. The 2022 Gerber Spokesbaby Contest, for example, erupted in controversy on Instagram with criticisms on their choice of winner – baby Isa, an adorable eight-month-old from Oklahoma who happens to be missing a femur and fibula in her right leg.
posted by spamandkimchi (14 comments total)

people are so damn mean - what kind of loser gets upset about an 8 month old baby?
posted by pyramid termite at 12:05 PM on February 14, 2023 [22 favorites]

what kind of loser gets upset about an 8 month old baby?

A loser whose identity is so tied up in being "the perfect mother" that they think the other baby cheated and beat their own baby.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:13 PM on February 14, 2023 [16 favorites]

A recent Memory Place episode looked at the historical Better Babies contents.
posted by stevil at 12:27 PM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

In case anyone else was interested, here's Isa, who is adorable.

I am not usually one for babies and I hate the idea of a baby beauty contest as much as child pageants. But COME ON they're good babies! 15/10.
posted by kittensofthenight at 12:28 PM on February 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

It's weird how people have conflated the idea that "this is the bestest most perfect baby" with the reality of "this is the baby that we want to represent our brand" which are two different things and only one of which is even a slightly reasonable thing to try to figure out.

Also the idea of baby contests as described in the article is absolutely horrifying to me.
posted by Aleyn at 12:32 PM on February 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

This part gobsmacked me:

At one 1913 baby contest in New York City, the eugenic stakes of the contest were made plain by the entrance of two infants who were “obviously not up to the standard.” As reported by The Evening World, “One had a twisted foot and the other, a babe of ten months, was woefully undersized for its age. When the registration officials asked the mothers why they desired to enter babies that obviously could not prove prize-winners they replied that they hoped through entering the contest to learn how they had failed in the care and upbringing of their offspring.”[5] These mothers, who readily accepted that their disabled children could never be winners, had not yet given up on their own reproductive and child-rearing capabilities. The contests, therefore, offered them hope for a more eugenic future, either through decreased disability for their current children or for future able-bodied, average-sized offspring.

You entered your "never be winners" babies...to find out what you did wrong to cause them to be like that?!?

I'm not even a mother and I'm just...I can't with this.

Go Isa.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:43 PM on February 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

At the height of its power in the 1920s , the “Invisible Empire” had what Fox called “staggering membership numbers,” exceeding 6 million members nationwide. Although Michigan membership is difficult to pinpoint, Fox cites reports of between 265,000 to 875,000 members.

In Lansing, the Klan was able to muster more than 15,000 members for a march down Michigan Avenue on Labor Day in 1924.

Many prominent businessmen, doctors and lawyers found their way to Klan membership, including Dan F. Gerber, the founder of Gerber Baby Foods.

posted by zamboni at 1:02 PM on February 14, 2023 [9 favorites]

The judge should be a computer with face recognition software and whichever baby looks the least like Phil Mitchell should win the prize. All babies look like Phil Mitchell so the prize would go to the first person to twig this and submit a puppy pic.
posted by biffa at 1:04 PM on February 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

You entered your "never be winners" babies...to find out what you did wrong to cause them to be like that?!?

To be fair, I doubt the newspaper actually asked the mothers why they entered the contest. I can't get access to the original article, but I think there's a very high likelihood that's what the registration officials of the baby eugenics contest told the newspaper reporter because they're horrible people who were running a baby eugenics contest.

(And even if the newspaper does directly quote the mothers.....it's a sick system and they're victims too)
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:07 PM on February 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

Suppose Isa's lack of a femur and a fibula could have been detected by pre-natal testing at some relatively early stage of gestation.

Would her parents have chosen to terminate the pregnancy?

Well, they might have in the recent past, but they might not be able to from now on.

And that gives this some dissonant overtones for me. Is Gerber positioning itself for this brave new world? The market share for disabled babies will probably be always be tiny, but baby culture will have to change so that we celebrate and value the lives of babies who wouldn’t have existed before, and I think Gerber foresees that.
posted by jamjam at 2:41 PM on February 14, 2023

You think the bigwigs at Gerber said "There are going to be more babies with visible disabilities born in the next few years, let's get in on that hot, hot, babies with visible disabilities market now!" That seems unlikely People with visible disabilities currently make up (large number I can't be bothered to look up) percentage of the population, but (small number etc) of the people in ads.

I think they picked Isa because she's cute as a button.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:03 PM on February 14, 2023 [13 favorites]

Suppose Isa's lack of a femur and a fibula could have been detected by pre-natal testing at some relatively early stage of gestation.

They did know, actually. From the link kittensofthenight posted above "We found out when I was 18 weeks pregnant that Isa would be born without a femur or a fibula in her right leg. "
posted by anastasiav at 3:15 PM on February 14, 2023 [10 favorites]

What the hell? I don't get the hate. She's not Harley Jarvis.
posted by Pronoiac at 4:37 AM on February 15, 2023

This image from American history of a Better Baby contest from 1930 popped up in my RSS feeds today and seems relevant to the topic.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 5:11 PM on February 17, 2023