This reading, “Soft-Soaping Empire” by Anne McClintock was interesting to me because of the relevance that it shows to today’s culture. The most interesting aspect of this reading had to do with the Pears’ advertisement for soap. Soap at that time just became a commodity, which allowed anyone and everyone to use it. The way they advertised it was by using two young boys, one black, and one white. It depicts a story of the black boy going into the tub and washing himself with the soap and in the end, everything but his face turned white and “pure.” The advertisement discloses a crucial element of late Victorian commodity culture: the metamorphic transformation of imperial time into consumer space-imperial progress consumed at a glance as domestic
