Advertisers use a diverse
range of strategies to get deep within consumer’s unconscious – trying to
create and then satisfy constructed desires related to Lacanian lack (the
difference between our sense of self, or subjectivity, and the external
representations of us). One of the most popular is the transformational
advertising that brings in hundreds of billions of dollars a year selling diet,
exercise, cosmetics, beauty and other products and plastic surgery procedures. As
many before me have noted, the problem with transformational advertising is the
way it sells an ideal that is both ephemeral (young) and impossible to achieve
(see for example Killing
Us Softly or Dove’s Evolution
ad).
Transformational advertising
starts with the premise that something, or everything, is wrong with you. Look at
the cover of just about any mainstream women’s magazine and you will get the
message that you a) are too fat, b) have bad skin, c) have a bad sex life, d) are
too fat, e) are out of style and f) are too fat. The underlying message is “I’m
not thin enough, I’m not sexy enough and doggone it, no one likes me.” (SNL).Transformation advertising
starts with the presumption that people are unhappy, unsatisfied and need to
change by spending money, if they are to live the dream life provided by those
same advertisers. And the effects are profound – from the low self-esteem so
many adolescent girls develop (boys don’t suffer the same fate as often), to
the objectification of women by both men and themselves, to the eating
disorders pandemic spreading outward from the U.S. to the farthest reaches of
the globe.
The latest example of this troubling,
though long-standing advertising practice comes to us from the Daily Mail: Who
IS that Girl? Is it any wonder girls seem so unhappy, even with the dramatic
increase in power, freedom and opportunity the past four decades have provided?
Here are the before and after pics …
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