Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Would you like some food with that sex?

I am pro-sex; let me be clear about that. Sex is a good thing, or at least is can be. I also don't have a problem with using sex and sexual innuendo to sell products. For me the issue is not whether you use sex in advertising, but how.

Take for, for example, this Singaporean Burger King ad (source). Comparing a seven inch sandwich to male genitalia is overly obvious and not terribly clever, but, whatever. What make me more uncomfortable is the heavily made up and photoshopped women looking rather like a doll, a frightened doll. That's just, um, not nice.

Or is she just meant to look... surprised?

See also:
Blowing A Seven Inch…Sandwich

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Biore-noia

It used to be that being "too old for acne but too young for wrinkles" was called: not having a skin problem. But it seems that there is not enough money to be made from discovering a need and catering to it. Now we have to create needs, and the easiest way to create a need is to create a problem.

Enter Biore, the skin product for people who don't have skin problems. You see having skin that is neither oily nor dry is now no longer having good skin, it is having the "problem" of "in-between" skin. Don't worry, keep slathering unnecessary products on it and I am sure it will be screwed up in no time.

I mean, seriously, you cannot make this shit up: "Over acne angst? Too young for wrinkle remedies? You and 21 million other women have in between skin. We have create a space just for you ... and nobody else". Nobody else, presumably, than those other 11 million, 900 thousand and 99 other in-betweeners with whom you are meant to interact in a skin care social networking "space" based on the compulsion to treat the terrible problem of not having problem skin.

What next? The umbrella for days when it is neither rainy nor sunny? Perhaps the transparent rug for people who want the inconvenience of having some things to vacuum but still want to be able to see their floorboards. Or maybe I am just bitter because my acne and wrinkle phases decided to overlap, excluding me forever from that coveted "in between" status....