A new radio commercial today, for the Cosmetic Surgery Center. With a breathy repetition of "Yessss" in between each announcement of the discount body special (new nose and breast aug for only $6500), this time the tactic was seduction. That's not to say it's clear just who those breathy yesses were supposed to seduce. It's tempting to assume that the demographic was the men who might pay for customized arm charm construction. In contrast to the inane, hot and heavy voiceover, at first the language of the commercial seemed clearly aimed at potential female customers. But upon further consideration, if we examine the language as if it speaks to a male purchaser rather than a female recipient, its objectifying effect gets magnified.
Yessss. $6500, yessss. $6500 for new breasts and a new nose. Yessss, $6500 for bigger, sexier breasts. Call the Cosmetic Surgery Center now. 1-800-Hot-3939. That's 1-800-HOT-3939. Yessss. $2900 for breast augmentation! Yessss, just $2900 for bigger, more beautiful breasts.
The effect of listening to this language is that one can start to imagine calling the number just to buy some disembodied breasts, as if could snatch up a pair of breasts without the bothersome body that’s usually attached to them.
Additionally, this ad turns on a couple of hidden assumptions, both taking for granted and reinforcing the idea that the bigger the breasts, the sexier, more beautiful the breasts, and that fake is preferable to natural. We may take it for granted at this point that augmented breasts are sexier than real breasts, but we shouldn’t. This assumption is not necessarily a valid one – especially if you’ve spent any time hanging out in Los Angeles or strip clubs staring at improbably thin women sporting pairs of rock-solid, sternum-valley-separated bolt-ons. If we assume that bigger (i.e. fake, in this context) are sexier, then we have to define what it means to be sexy. Is conformity sexy? Is consumerism sexy? Though it’s not often I agree with them, even the mainstream women’s magazines pay lip service to the notion that confidence equals sex appeal (while, of course, simultaneously destroying the confidence of their readers by their relentless advertising and self-improvement campaigns, all of which have as their basis the notion that anyone is good enough just as she is).
All of which leads us to the quandary that is the relationship between cosmetic surgery and confidence.
Many cosmetic surgeons market their services as a way to gain self-confidence, and many patients claim feelings of improved self-confidence as a result of their surgeries. Of course, possession of the kind of self-confidence which involves unaltered self-acceptance is hard to come by in a culture predicated on tearing those feelings down for profit. In the end, this kind of self-possessed confidence (in which we already possess everything we need to feel confident, no purchase necessary) would prevent us from electing for cosmetic procedures in the first place.
In “Weasel Words,” William Lutz’s classic essay on the language of advertising, Lutz points out that some of the most misleading language exists in the form of unfinished comparisons. Ads routinely claim things like “700% quieter,” “50% more,” or “30% faster,” but don’t say quieter, more or faster than what exactly, leaving us to fill in that blank for ourselves. Often we automatically fill in that blank so that we read the claim as 50% more than the previous serving size or 700% quieter than the competitor when really the claim is actually based on something else ridiculous – like a car is 700% quieter on the inside than the outside, not 700% quieter than the competing model or the box may have 50% more space in it though not actually 50% more product.
In the Cosmetic Surgery Center ad, the phrase “more beautiful breasts” is an unfinished comparison. More beautiful than what? For the female listener, the automatic answer is “more beautiful breasts than mine;” for the male listener, it’s “more beautiful breasts than my [girlfriend/wife/lover] already has,” i.e. no matter what the current breasts look like, they’re not beautiful enough. But what is the claim really based on? With surgery, will your breasts become more beautiful than Victoria Beckham’s? More beautiful than Pamela Anderson’s? More beautiful than a porn star’s? And if the language of the ad equates beauty with size, then what happens to the claim? Will your post-surgery breasts be “more beautiful” (i.e. bigger) than the breasts of your 12-year-old neighbor? Probably so – but you can see, if we look at it this way, the ad’s not actually promising anything at all.
Seduction suggests a certain powerlessness on the part of the person seduced, a succumbing to an overpowering force. It can be a relief to be seduced, a momentary relief to abjure responsibility for fulfilling our own desires. In the end, the ad suggests that what’s sexier and more beautiful than we already are is succumbing to the very insecurities it has sown. It urges you to think of the operating table as a bed, diet and exercise as keys which never quite fit the lock on the bedroom door. Yessss, says the woman in the ad, we’ll tell you what’s beautiful without telling you anything at all; we’ll open the door, lie you down on the bed, and have our way with you. Don’t struggle against the door, she says; succumb. What she doesn’t say is that every day our culture changes the locks.
