Pic: Fly on Gorse by Maura McHugh
Adverts on the telly are like flies in the garden – you know they are part of the ecosystem but mostly they irritate the hell out of you despite your attempts to cultivate a Buddhist policy of compassion for everything. Sometimes you just want to crush the blighters out of existence.
Nothing knocks me off the track to spiritual enlightenment more than beauty products adverts on the telly targeted at women. These adverts create a glamorous illusion containing a lie that you too can look that way as long as you buy product X. Despite the fact that they’re asking you to identify with underfed waifs, while tricking them out with the help of the best make-up, stylists and hairdressers known in the PR world.
This image of physical perfection has always been difficult to live up to, but at least in the past the myth was achieved using real products, along with ace lighting, a catchy song and savvy direction. Over the ten years advertisers have been employing a battalion of crack CGI geeks to spruce up every pixel. Eyelashes are impossibly long and clump-free, hair shines with elven luminescence and wrinkles are non-existent. Thighs are long and firm, teeth are even and whiter than our disappearing polar ice caps and skin tone is lightened with appalling regularity.
When employing these effects advertisers are lying. There is nothing a woman can do to look that good. Worse still – and this is the part that crooks my dharma – is that the advertisements admit they are lying. In fine, hard-to-read print along the bottom you’re told ‘eyelashes enhanced in post production’ or ‘natural hair extensions used’. When outrageous claims are made about how much women love the product you discover that it’s actually 30 out of 38 women, drunk at a hen party, who concur that it reduces wrinkles on a night out. They don white coats and babble pseudo-science, hoping the graphics will mesmerise you long enough so you won’t notice the actual statistics quoted underneath.
Not only are the advertisers acknowledging their falsehoods, but they expect you to buy the product anyway. It’s been my policy now never to buy a product that employs these tactics. But I wonder, do advertisers think women are stupid? The answer must be yes, judging the way they pitch products to us.
After all, apparently we’d love to videotape our hair swishing and upload it to a web site. That’s what girls love, don’t you know: preening and competing with one another online. Every time I see that ad I want to hammer a fly into oblivion.
Here’s a video of a fabulous sketch from That Mitchell and Web Look, which in less than a minute deconstructs how advertisers pitch their products to women (and compares it to how they are pitched to men).
Don’t believe the hype ladies. Better still, don’t buy the hype.
Maura McHugh is a writer and blogger who lives in the West of Ireland and is happy to call herself a feminist. She’s a geek and a fan of horror cinema and comic books so she long ago developed a thick skin about not conforming to ‘normal’ womanly interests. She also likes fashion and make-up, but not when it costs her peace of mind. Maura blogs at http://splinister.com/ and is on Twitter: @splinister
I agree but not just in relation to beauty products. Across media advertising as a whole sexual imagery is used in the most absurd ways because experience shows it is in this way that the (often) wretched products are best sold. It is possible in Britain to do something about it. I got a national campaigh abandoned by making a complaint to the ASA. The issue often turns on abstruse and unexpected points, much like the law in general. If you object why not do just that: object. The result is usually educative.
Damn straight! When my son was young we used the ad breaks as an exercise opportunity – we’d jump up and down shouting “Lies! Lies! Lies!”
My 16 year old stepdaughter play this game when we have to suffer through ads on the telly which involves shouting “AIRBRUSHED” or “FALSE LASHES” or, my personal favourite, “NON-REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE” when we see one of these unattainable beauty adverts.
When I first pointed out the small print she was shocked and a bit miffed that she had wasted her pocket money on products which were never going to work. Not that she needs them anyway. But that’s another story.
Hee! I love the idea of you shouting ““NON-REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE” at the screen! I think it’s really important to educate young people about these little details – it’s easy for those of us who are actively interested in the way the media works to notice Photoshopping or small print disclaimers, but we shouldn’t forget that loads of people simply aren’t aware of these things. Plenty of kids have no idea how much digital retouching goes into photos of celebrities of magazines, for example, and plenty of people, old and young, don’t look out for the “non-representative sample” warning. The more these things are discussed, the more aware people will be, and hopefully that will lead to advertisers treating women – and everyone – with a bit more respect.
Hi Maura,
Brilliant post – loved the Mitchell and Webb sketch!
There are new guidelines in the UK about cosmetic advertising – fingers crossed it catches on here.
http://fashionista.com/2011/04/the-uk-releases-new-guidelines-to-prevent-misleading-cosmetics-ads/
Alas, if it were only for beauty products! BUT even stale biscuits are getting horned up by “hello boys!” ads where women ‘seduce’ the audience into eating what got ignored in cupboards in the 1970s. They loll around fluffy mattresses, dance around in basques, stick their tongues out all suggestively in the latest Kimnberely, Mikado and coconut creams advert in the hope that the promise of a taste of sex inside some marshmallow vomit sandwich offering will get you buying by the truckload. ‘Come play with us!’ the sexpots sing. ‘I’m a naughty girl…I’m a playful girl’, as she licks mikado off her finger. *sigh* [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnHrCeiowXQ&w=640&h=390
The screechy little girls who sang and danced in the original [Irish] Jacobs ads have been replaced by a rather more worldly cast. The new owners may well have borrowed the idea from a 1988 Kenny Everett BBC TV Show sketch in which he sings ‘I’d Like To Dunk You In My Coffee’ as girls dressed as biscuits dance suggestively around him.
The product remains the same!
Gosh, I dunno about you ladies but I ALWAYS look ‘like I’ve just stepped out of a salon’. After I’ve shake ‘n vac’d the house, seen to my husband and re-applied my lippy off I teeter with my perfect Benetton babies strapped into my 4WD on our way to Mommy’s great job in the city. I don’t just juggle balls – I eat them. All while batting my unfeasibly long lashes.
Good post Maura – could we make it into the fine print on every ad? Orla, I will be adopting that game! My 4 year old daughter says “Stop making me want stuff!” to the TV. We’re off to a good start I hope.
Just watched the sketch. Brilliant!
I absolutely agree, and what is scarier, is the younger generations are oblivious to what all this does for women’s self images. My daughter and her friends–cringe at the mention of feminist arguments put forth by women of my generation. And I need not say their reaction to “feminism”. I am seeing a dangerous anti women feeling growing and if these young women don’t get their act together– so much of what we have accomplished… will be history.
I am an active feminist, and yet I use moisturizing lotions, and wear glamour… a glamorous look chosen by me, not ordered by the media. (Oh well sometimes I submit…) I even wear some makeup, but mostly to soften the effects of a life well lived.
Sadly, many ads are produced and created by women… I think its possible to sell a product with respect to the intelligence of women. Or better yet, we women should only buy, that which deserved to be purchased. Your comments are very accurate and on point. I will hammer away one day.
Hi Mae,
I was heartbroken at yesterday’s post about a nine-year-old wanting to be a ‘skinny girl’, because it brings home how early the dissatisfaction with our bodies is implanted in women by the mainstream media.
Mothers, aunts and mentors need to encourage girls to reject these ideas. The above sketch is brilliant because it does it in a funny way, which is something young people respond to. It might be a good launching point for a discussion.
After all it’s not ‘rabid feminist mum’, but those cool guys Mitchell and Webb (actually, M&W’s writers) who are making the point.
I like to look well – but I do for myself, not for other people. One doesn’t have to be anti-fashion to be a feminist.
The most important thing is that women have a log economic power, and we need to flex.
Thus, I will not buy a product that admits it’s lying about the effects of its product in the advert.
Seriously, if you think about it, who does that?
Oops – that should read we have a ‘lot of economic power, and we need to flex it.’
Cup of coffee, stat!
That was hilarious! Thanks for sharing the sketch, Maura.
And you’re so right: if I see an ad on telly I assume they’re pouring precious research bucks into marketing and packaging, so don’t buy it. Hah!
If you haven’t come across them, have a look at Sarah Haskins’ sketches on Current tv – a similar angle to the Mitchell and Webb sketch http://current.com/shows/infomania/89830244_sarah-haskins-in-target-women-skin-care.htm
Sarah Haskin is a goddess! She needs a wider audience than Current. Love her critiques of the insanity of advertising.
I wish Target Women was still going! I think I remember reading somewhere that she’s writing scripts in Hollywood now?
Good post, the clip is great.
Sometimes i despair about the whole issue – a colleague (senior position, very glam) was at pains to reassure me that she wasn’t ‘a raving feminist’ the other day, when we were speaking about an issue in relation to discrimination against women in the workplace. She was ‘a girly girl’, in her own words – obviously career minded (by her own admission) – but God forbid – not a ‘raving feminist’…..
Depressing, isn’t it……….
I’ve seen women do this a lot – say they are in favour of equal rights, but quickly add ‘but I’m not a feminist’. Or ‘raving’ feminist even.
Even when I was in college I noticed women were afraid to attribute the f word to themselves.
I’ve always been proud to say I’m a feminist. Mostly, because we need to reclaim the word, especially for the women who fought so hard to give us the rights that we now enjoy.
Well said, Maura. I hate it when people claim we need a new word, because (a) it’s allowing anti-feminists who have demonised the word feminism to win and (b) because humanism, or equalism, or whatever alternatives I’ve seen suggested ignore the fact that the balance of power all over the world is hugely weighted against women, and that women’s specific rights are important.
Brilliant post. Loved the comedy clips. On a more serious note, has anyone seen the Dove Evolution video on how a billboard gets made? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U