The marketability of pain

The Marketability of Pain

"The media would have much to lose if women ceased to be influenced by its messages." (1)

"The Average American is exposed to over 1500 ads every day and will spend a year and a half of his or her life watching television commercials. Although the individual ads are often insipid and trivial, they have a serious cumulative impact." (2)

Anyone who has ever owned a television, or a radio, or a magazine subscription, or even stepped outside the house knows how prevalent advertising is in our culture. Like it or not, advertisements influence everybody� that's the point of having them. These advertisements are a ploy to get you to buy a particular product, not only instead of another, similar product, but at all.

A person who has been backpacking for any length of time knows that very little is required for survival, even beyond the basic minimums. A standard, healthy adult can carry enough on his or her back to not only survive, but live in some measure of comfort, for over a week. In fact, the standard of comfort that can be reached is higher than people from many periods of history could expect.

So why is it that we cannot live in that basic level and be comfortable? Our standards are higher, obviously. In part, our standards are set by what our society is capable of. (Many of the poorest Americans live in greater comfort than past monarchs because of things such as central heating, basic medical care, and cheap bread.) However, the greater part of our expectations are set by what we see around us, and by advertisements that influence what we see.

"At least one study of female college students suggests that this impact is indeed substantial: brief exposure to several ads showing highly attractive models resulted in decreased satisfaction with one's own appearance, in comparison to the satisfaction of students in a control group who saw ads without models." (3)

Advertisements have one purpose: to sell a product. There's an old adage: 'build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.' This is not the truth for most products. Most products are things that there is no immediate need for. Advertisements create a perceived need in an attempt to put their particular product at the head of the shopping list. They do this by portraying their product as a solution to a problem.

If there is no problem, the product cannot be a solution. Therefore, the advertisements have to create one.

"The daring insistence of early feminists that a woman is beautiful just as she naturally appears has been rewritten in a commercial translation as the Natural Look. The horrible irony of this is, of course, that only a handful of women have the Natural Look naturally. Most of us have flaws that must be disguised if we are to resemble the beautiful models setting the standard� a fact that the beauty industry is banking on." (4)

Products related to appearance have very little to do with survival. A bottle of liquid foundation or a pack of eyeshadow will have little direct effect on whether you have enough to eat or a warm place to sleep. In fact, not only do these products not help with physical needs, but they do very little for emotional needs. Cosmetics have little direct effect on a person's level of happiness, but ads explicitly and implicitly state that they will help in the quest for happiness.

Cosmetics are not the only appearance products; thousands of hours of air time and millions of lines of print are dedicated to diet and fitness products and programs. There is so much space and energy devoted to promoting the female body as something flawed that in a 1984 Glamour study, respondents chose losing 10-15 pounds as the goal that was most desirable, above success in love or work. (5) (There is also some indication that many women feel that weight loss is a more attainable goal.)

"The wider world of discrimination, poverty, and oppression simply doesn't exist in advertising. There is never the slightest hint that people suffer because of a socioeconomic and political situation that could be changed. . . If we are unhappy, there is something wrong with us that can be solved by buying something. We can smoke a cigarette or have a drink or eat some ice cream. Or we can lose some weight." (6)

Advertising works by reducing complex situations to simple solutions. Problems are solved quickly and thoroughly by the purchase of some product. A person who is unpopular, for instance, will gain the approbation of everyone by purchasing Product X.

Product X uses a common sales strategy that uses a logical structure that you may have learned in school: If A, then B; if B, then C; therefore, if A, then C. For Product X, the syllogism works like this: A person who is not beautiful will be unpopular. Product X will make a person beautiful. Therefore, a person who purchases Product X will become beautiful and therefore popular. ("Are you spending your Saturday nights alone? Get Product X and spice up your weekends!")

The problem with this construct is that the premises are flawed. A person who is not beautiful (a changing definition) will not always be unpopular, and the reverse is not necessarily true. (If A, then B does not mean if B, then A.) Neither is it true that beautiful people are popular. However, ads such as this work because these premises are assumed to be universally true. In the advertising world, beautiful girls are always popular and always happy. This is expanded into the premise that one has to be beautiful to be happy.

It is easier to sell to needs than wants. Wants can be put on hold while needs are taken care of. If women want to be beautiful, they will buy food and clothing and maybe a few products to work on their image. If they need to be beautiful, they will go to any lengths, including surgery, to achieve that goal� a goal which may change in just a few years, necessitating more beauty treatments.

Pain is a selling point, because it can be 'treated.' Advertisements hold out a hand with a pain treatment. What ads do not show is the other hand, the one that is causing the pain in the first place.

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(1)Rothblum, Esther D. "'I'll Die for the Revolution but Don't Ask Me Not to Diet': Feminism and the Continuing Stigmatization of Obesity." Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders. Fallon, Patricia, et al., eds. (New York: The Guilford Press, 1994) p. 64.

(2)Kilbourne, Jean. "Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising and the obsession With Thinness." Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders. Fallon, Patricia, et al., eds. (New York: The Guilford Press, 1994) p. 395.

(3)Kilbourne, 398.

(4)Chapkis, Wendy. Beauty Secrets: Women and the Politics of Appearance (USA: South End Press, 1986) p. 8.

(5)Wolf, Naomi. "Hunger." Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders. Fallon, Patricia, et al., eds. (New York: The Guilford Press, 1994) p. 96.

(6)Kilbourne, 405-06.

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"The Average American is exposed to over 1500 ads every day and will spend a year and a half of his or her life watching television commercials. Although the individual ads are often insipid and trivial, they have a serious cumulative impact." (2)	Anyone who has ever owned a television, or a radio, or a magazine subscription, or even stepped outside the house knows how prevalent advertising is in our culture. Like it or not, advertisements influence everybody� that's the point of having them. These advertisements are a ploy to get you to buy a particular product, not only instead of another, similar product, but at all. A person who has been backpacking for any length of time knows that very little is required for survival, even beyond the basic minimums. A standard, healthy adult can carry enough on his or her back to not only survive, but live in some measure of comfort, for over a week. In fact, the standard of comfort that can be reached is higher than people from many periods of history could expect. So why is it that we cannot live in that basic level and be comfortable? Our standards are higher, obviously. In part, our standards are set by what our society is capable of. (Many of the poorest Americans live in greater comfort than past monarchs because of things such as central heating, basic medical care, and cheap bread.) However, the greater part of our expectations are set by what we see around us, and by advertisements that influence what we see.
"At least one study of female college students suggests that this impact is indeed substantial: brief exposure to several ads showing highly attractive models resulted in decreased satisfaction with one's own appearance, in comparison to the satisfaction of students in a control group who saw ads without models." (3)	Advertisements have one purpose: to sell a product. There's an old adage: 'build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.' This is not the truth for most products. Most products are things that there is no immediate need for. Advertisements create a perceived need in an attempt to put their particular product at the head of the shopping list. They do this by portraying their product as a solution to a problem. If there is no problem, the product cannot be a solution. Therefore, the advertisements have to create one.
"The daring insistence of early feminists that a woman is beautiful just as she naturally appears has been rewritten in a commercial translation as the Natural Look. The horrible irony of this is, of course, that only a handful of women have the Natural Look naturally. Most of us have flaws that must be disguised if we are to resemble the beautiful models setting the standard� a fact that the beauty industry is banking on." (4)	Products related to appearance have very little to do with survival. A bottle of liquid foundation or a pack of eyeshadow will have little direct effect on whether you have enough to eat or a warm place to sleep. In fact, not only do these products not help with physical needs, but they do very little for emotional needs. Cosmetics have little direct effect on a person's level of happiness, but ads explicitly and implicitly state that they will help in the quest for happiness. Cosmetics are not the only appearance products; thousands of hours of air time and millions of lines of print are dedicated to diet and fitness products and programs. There is so much space and energy devoted to promoting the female body as something flawed that in a 1984 Glamour study, respondents chose losing 10-15 pounds as the goal that was most desirable, above success in love or work. (5) (There is also some indication that many women feel that weight loss is a more attainable goal.)
"The wider world of discrimination, poverty, and oppression simply doesn't exist in advertising. There is never the slightest hint that people suffer because of a socioeconomic and political situation that could be changed. . . If we are unhappy, there is something wrong with us that can be solved by buying something. We can smoke a cigarette or have a drink or eat some ice cream. Or we can lose some weight." (6)	Advertising works by reducing complex situations to simple solutions. Problems are solved quickly and thoroughly by the purchase of some product. A person who is unpopular, for instance, will gain the approbation of everyone by purchasing Product X. Product X uses a common sales strategy that uses a logical structure that you may have learned in school: If A, then B; if B, then C; therefore, if A, then C. For Product X, the syllogism works like this: A person who is not beautiful will be unpopular. Product X will make a person beautiful. Therefore, a person who purchases Product X will become beautiful and therefore popular. ("Are you spending your Saturday nights alone? Get Product X and spice up your weekends!") The problem with this construct is that the premises are flawed. A person who is not beautiful (a changing definition) will not always be unpopular, and the reverse is not necessarily true. (If A, then B does not mean if B, then A.) Neither is it true that beautiful people are popular. However, ads such as this work because these premises are assumed to be universally true. In the advertising world, beautiful girls are always popular and always happy. This is expanded into the premise that one has to be beautiful to be happy. It is easier to sell to needs than wants. Wants can be put on hold while needs are taken care of. If women want to be beautiful, they will buy food and clothing and maybe a few products to work on their image. If they need to be beautiful, they will go to any lengths, including surgery, to achieve that goal� a goal which may change in just a few years, necessitating more beauty treatments. Pain is a selling point, because it can be 'treated.' Advertisements hold out a hand with a pain treatment. What ads do not show is the other hand, the one that is causing the pain in the first place.