Aunt Jemima Products

Aunt Jemima is known as a common, popular pancake mix and syrup brand in the United States. On the covers of the boxes is a picture of a heavyset woman who has a large broad smile on her face. On the current images of her, she is seen wearing pearl earrings and a shirt with a lace collar. But according to www.auntjemima.com, it wasn't until 1989 that she was shown wearing such attire. Before that, she wore a headscarf. I picked Aunt Jemima products as a piece of racial media, because the image of the black women was a stereotype of the mammy image and is still there even though the appearance of her has changed.

By her old image, she was seen as a mammy figure that was a large black woman that cooked and cleaned for the white Southern plantation owners and their families. What better way for the Aunt Jemima Company to put a picture of a person who devotes their life to cooking, not by choice, on the fronts of the pancake mix boxes and syrup containers. According to the movie Ethnic Notions, “the mammy emerged as a defense of slavery”. She was to show the joy that one could receive from being a slave. She was shown as loving to perform all of the cooking and cleaning tasks in her white owners' home.

Every single mammy had her head were covered with a bandanna to hide her hair. Also, the original style of Aunt Jemima showed an overweight black lady, which was essential to being a media representation of a mammy. The image was to be useful but unattractive. According to the movie, a mammy was supposed to look unattractive so as to not cause marital problems in the house. But in reality having an ugly mammy was not always the case. It was known that some mammies were slim and attractive in which allured the white husbands of the houses. Now on current boxes, it appears that Aunt Jemima has been slimmed down along with her knew form of dressing, which included the removal of the bandana. These slight changes have made her more attractive and less like the stereotypical mammy.

However, I believe that these slight changes both do and do not help the stereotypes that go along with the woman Aunt Jemima. I think that by making her skinnier and giving her more of a classy clothing style helps to give her a sense of importance about her. Also, it helps with showing her as an established woman that could both support the black race, as well as the women sex. I do not believe that this cures the negative stereotype that went along with her being seen as a mammy. She didn’t get a makeover until 1989, which is quite recent. The name Aunt Jemima sounds like that of a Southern housewife. The history of the mammy image of Aunt Jemima cannot be erased by a slight alteration in her appearance, but it is one step closer to acknowledging racist images seen everyday in media items.