Cosmetic ads worry me. How many of them promote trustworthy products? Take eye care, for example. Is it safe, in the long run, to clear up bloodshot eyes? Nature put blood there for a reason, I think, and messing with that process might risk vision damage in the long run. I hearken back to a time not so long ago, when women took arsenic to lighten their skin complexion. How many lives were unwittingly shortened or worsened for that vanity?
Deodorant commercials are another pet peeve of mine, even though I apply an underarm deodorant every morning. (It’s not so much that I’m deodorizing, mind you; it’s more of a ritual … or so I tell myself. In short, critical or not, I, too, am susceptible to sales pitches. Ah, how weak we humans are.)
There have been times when people didn’t care how they smelled (which hardly mattered when streets were “paved” with horse manure). I’ve read that some kings demanded prospective mistresses provide documentation saying the ladies had never bathed. The unwashed scent of such an amour was said to be erotic. Nowadays of course, there’s little money an ad agency could make of that concept. Better to promote the purchase of expensive perfumes.
By perfumes, here, I include after-shave lotions and male deodorants. It seems both sexes must pay the perfume piper. Sometimes you ride in an elevator next to a person so heavily perfumed it makes your nose wrinkle, your eyes water. You might exit that elevator stinking as if you’d just left a cheap whorehouse.
Another pet peeve is the way commercials belittle people, make them look bad. How many times have you seen the male portrayed as a hapless boob, the female shown as flighty or trivial?
TV ads may depict children as misbehaving brats: “I won’t eat my broccoli even if I have to sit at this table until I die!” The solution, according to the advertising gods, is to placate the little monster by enhancing his broccoli with cheese. How’s that for good parenting advice?
I have many other complaints about TV advertisements, but enough carping. I want to end this diatribe with my wide-screen view of advertising men.
To my mind, ad men fall into two categories. There are the professionals, who consider advertising an honorable career, who strive to introduce new products or inform the public of existing products, doing so creatively, sometimes humorously, but not deceptively. Then, there are the ad men I consider hucksters, who view us as nothing more than stupid, gullible marks, easily manipulated.
The first category I appreciate and admire. The second—that is, the hucksters—I pity. For they grub around in a dark corner of civilization, dismissing the essential nobility of mankind.
Hucksters overlook that we—mankind in general—have raised ourselves from cave dwellers, tree dwellers, to a point where we can look at the moon and say, “Some of us have been there.” To be sure, we are flawed and stumble from time to time as we try to make progress, but we do make progress … and we quite literally aim for the stars.
Sign up to receive updates and the Friday File email notices.
Support local, independent news – contribute to The Fallon Post, your non-profit (501c3) online news source for all things Fallon.
The Fallon Post -- 1951 W. Williams #385, Fallon, Nevada 89406
Comment
Comments