High Five, JC Penney!

I checked the mail today to find JC Penney’s special 24-page Mother’s Day catalogue.  Warning: Shit gets straight up sappy after the break.

Rather than portray the white-picket fence portrait of an American family celebrating motherhood, they chose to use real women in their advertisement: three generations of Indian women (pictured above), a Texas mom holding her Down Syndrome baby, a single mother that put herself through school while raising four daughters, and a lesbian couple that embrace art as a means of self-expression.

As I mentioned briefly in my post about airbrushing in women’s magazines, I think it’s important for retailers to consider their customer base when they market their products.  The American mom isn’t a cookie-cutter clone, and it’s excellent that JC Penney’s catalogue chose to capture that by using models that represent their consumers.