Things Annoying | Bald Men in Ads
I don't look to American advertising as a bastion of social awareness. In fact, American advertising often renders me pink-faced with rage. From the often useless products themselves, to the affixing of "miracle" to lipsticks and cleansers, to the irritating way in which nonsense-sounding French words are attached to haircare products in an effort to make people think they work better, I find much about marketing offensive. "Nutrisse" is not a word in French or in English, and it dries out your damn scalp, OK? And though I think it's possible that there are people stupid enough out there who believe that it is, and who will buy it based on that, I would like to believe that number is relatively tiny.
Another advertising cliche that riddles me with hatred is the fixing of "micro" to unrelatedwords. Microbeads? Seriously? As opposed to? And how is "microsuede," faux suede, micro in any conceivable way? I have an answer for you: It's not. It's just fake.
Presently, though, nothing offends me more than the way in which the way someone looks indicates their fate in a commercial. After a history of treating minorities appallingly, we've evidently elected to make reparations by allowing all non-white people to be the smart winners in all advertising situations. It makes sense. I mean, depicting Black women as wise shoppers should make up for hundreds of years of violent behavior; allowing Asian men to be smart computer technicians should make up for the concentration camps. (Of course, this isn't across the board; Black women are often given the task of looking sassy and saying nothing more than "mmmm-hmmm," and in commercials featuring no white people, we run rampant with racist generalizations... So, don't start feeling too good about marketing agencies yet.) If there is a woman and a man in the commercial, the women will be the intelligent one most of the time. If it's two men, the hot guy will win.
At least it makes casting easy.
And suppose you need to cast an idiot, a loser, or a dolt; suppose you need an actor to represent a bad credit score or an unattractive computer; suppose for a moment that you need an actor to pretend to be a drain clog or a stupid deli counter worker. Who might you hire?
I'll tell you who you'd hire: me. Short, bald or balding, overweight men.
And we know the psychology of advertising so well that as soon as the short bald dude appears, we know he's going to be the loser. He'll be the guy at the end with the frown on his face while the "wah wah wahhhh" music plays and a hotter guy hip-checks him out of frame. Because in America, if you're short and bald, you are a worthless man. In fact, you are not a man, but a fat blob in a body stocking with a stupid grin on your face.
Short bald guys never appear with attractive people in conjoined bathtubs during E.D. commercials; short bald guys never get their faces stroked while shaving; short bald guys never, never, never make the right choices as the grocery store or at fast food restaurants. Short bald goes always end up with their ice cream sundaes on their laps, though, or splattered in mud while the hot Orcan man impresses his wife with superior pest control skills.
And I get it. I'm a white guy and that doesn't entitle me to much bitching. There are bigger, more hateful stereotypes out there. (I guess being a gay white guy allows me a slighter higher measure of bitching, but evidently not all that much.) And I'm certainly not an apologist for the plight of the white dude. What I am, though, is sick of being the butt of the advertising joke. I may not be hot, and I may not have all that much hair, but I also happen to be good-looking, I happen to be a consumer, and I happen to immediately stop buying any product that depicts bald dudes as idiots. Because it's stupid, and because it says something about the world--and, I'm sorry, it teaches people things. It teaches kids things. If you grow up to be short and bald and, god forbid, have love handles, well you might as well sit back and wait for the pizza delivery guy to steal your wife. And don't worry about school, because you'll always be seen as stupid anyway.
If we look closely at advertising--and we should--we will find a lot of things that will offend all of us. And that's not all that OK. The marketing agencies are so far removed from the American people that they openly offend us, probably with little realization that they're doing it, and we just blithely go on allowing them to do it. "Whatever." Or "Oh, wasn't that commercial funny." Uh, not really. The only funny commercial I remember was one where a sour patch kid chopped off a little girl's pigtails. (Now THAT'S comedy.)
Thankfully we have enormous power, because if we stop buying their shit we send a message loud and clear. And I think that matters. I think we need to start paying attention to what the advertisements say and I think we need to make buying choices based on that. Because if they're willing to put it on TV, they're announcing the beliefs of their company. And we have license to respond to that.
The only real problem is when every company depicts us badly... but at that point, we should just make our own damn soap for once. That's power, too, and we actually can get guy without some of the things we think we can't live without. We just need to not to too lazy to try.
