In 2018, Gerber made headlines for selecting baby Lucas as the winner of its Spokesbaby Contest, making Lucas the first Gerber baby with Down syndrome in the company’s 95-year history. As then-President and CEO of the well-known baby food company Bill Partyka explained in a 2018 press release, “Every year, we choose the baby who best exemplifies Gerber’s long-standing heritage of recognizing that every baby is a Gerber baby, and this year, Lucas is the perfect fit.”
Gerber has intentionally worked to make their Spokesbaby contests inclusive since the foundation of the contest in 2011, transcending the singular “Gerber baby” with which their brand is so strongly associated. Yet, over the past few years, contest winners have faced online backlash. The 2022 Gerber Spokesbaby Contest, for example, erupted in controversy last month as mothers took to Instagram to criticize Gerber’s 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. Many felt the decision was made suspiciously quickly, while others claimed it reflected a “liberal agenda.” As one Instagram mother explained, “My children are white children with no problems and healthy. They won’t pick them because they are just that and afraid of the backlash they will get if they did.” For such commentors, the non-white winners or winners with disabilities should have had no real chance of winning over their own able-bodied, white babies. The fact that they won, then, must mean foul play on Gerber’s part, not that the contest winners reflect a cultural shift towards embracing diversity and difference.
The reactions to Isa’s win are, in part, a response to our own cultural moment, where white supremacist conspiracies have become part of mainstream political consciousness. Yet, like white supremacy itself, baby contests are also part of a long tradition of eugenic spectacle in the United States, which has always aimed to construct ideal bodies defined by white supremacy and able-bodiedness.
Though they sound quaint today, baby contests have been a crucial site where ideas about what constitutes the “ideal baby” were produced, debated, and negotiated. Since the nineteenth century, public health organizations, women’s social clubs, and corporations have used baby contests to grab mothers’ attention and encourage them to have more children, especially in white, rural communities. They were often modeled after livestock contests and held at farming shows. Held next to contests for the biggest pumpkin or the fattest cow, baby contests awarded prizes to mothers who had raised the healthiest “human crops.”