Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Good little consumers
I was washing my face last night and it occurred to me...the endless cycle of consumerism most of us are caught in. Is it worse now because it is being disseminated by an ever more pervasive media? I definitely think so. In psychological test after test, it is shown that human beings measure their self worth and personal happiness in relation to (by comparison with) other people. Healthy? No. Human? Yes. Commercials do their job by creating a fantasy world of people who are better looking, richer and happier than we are. This creates an insecurity in us which is the life blood of marketing. I don't wear much make-up, but I do wear some and last night I wondered why. There I was using eye makeup remover and soap to wash off this stuff and then, since my skin dries out from using soap (which every dermatologist will tell you should be used sparingly) I need to use a moisturizer to put the moisture back in, and then if my skin were to break out from the moisturizer, there would be another product to deal with that too. Ayayay. So there we are: a perfect little mini-cycle of consumerism that is self reinforcing and sustaining. Sadly, even knowing this I probably won't stop because the psychological hold on me is so strong. I do want to see what other cycles of consumerism I might be able to get a handle on though...
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Consider it from a male perspective, with all the ED drugs on the market constantly shouting "Now you can be ready when the moment strikes...for 36hrs" (Talk about pressure).
Beyond that, guys are getting hit over the head with a ton of new products that had never before been geared to this demographic: male tanning systems, hair restoration, hair coloring, body sprays, the list goes on.
I sit and watch these commercials thinking, "Why do I need these? I've never needed them before, but now they scream that it's imperative that any attractive, reasonable-concerned male should need these products to be accepted, loved and even sought after by the opposite sex."
As a side-note, commercials are using a new device more and more nowadays that I like to refer to as the "stupid husband" technique.
Watch and you'll see that all products geared toward women portray men in a stupid light (rather than a previously unseen role). Men used to be absent from commercials for cleaning products unless it was Armor-all or power tools. Now, they're all there, but the guy is so obsessed with the Swiffer that he won't let the wife use it. He covets these products with a child-like innocence. "No, it's mine," he says. Where the wife rolls her eyes and smiles at her silly man.
He stares at these new-fangled contraptions, brimming with technology: the toilet scrubber with the foaming release button, the sweeper that auto-ejects discarded static pads, the bagless vacuum systems.
The wife allows the man to share in her domain of the house-hold like a child with a ball-popping squeek toy vacuum.
How condescending it is for both genders: The woman sacrifices her "domain" to the idiot man.
Sorry, but I just can't buy into it. If consumers take a step back, they'll realize how manipulative they are; ads play off men's insecurities and women's territorialism for the "home-maker" of yore.
Give us a break and just show the products, tell us why they're worth investigating, and leave psychology out of it. You'll get much more respect from the cerebral consumers of today and avoid the stigma of roles within the household.
Maybe I'm wrong, though. Maybe consumers are just stupid as a whole and they fall for these machinations of advertisers.
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