At a media forum recently, after delivering our talk, we asked members of the audience to share their views on the TV programs they watched. Quite without meaning to focus on just one topic, the viewers’ comments concentrated on TV commercials – the good, the bad and the unintentionally funny!
The “weirdest” TV spot they saw? Quite a number of the reactors cited the sanitary napkin ad that promised women a “happy period” if they would use the product. How, the respondents wailed or giggled, could this be taken as truth in advertising? The lucky women who had experienced a “happy” menstrual period were requested to stand up. – Nobody did!
Also cited as “perplexing” and “cautionary” wasn’t one commercial per se, but the great number of TV spots for hair products – shampoos, conditioners, etc. What a reactor wanted to know, was our seeming national obsession with clean, beautiful, flowing and radiant hair all about?
Assurance
It was further noted that the products weren’t being sold mainly for their ability to clean hair and remove dandruff, but because long, radiant locks were an assurance, not just of beauty, but also of success in general.
Like, there was one shampoo being advertised by a model cast as a TV news anchor, who cooed that she got her job because of her beautiful hair! So, the word’s out: If you want to become a broadcast journalist, make sure you have the hair for it!
This segued quite naturally to viewers’ comments about all those skin-whitening products we see advertised so often on TV.
It’s obvious that Filipinos are being enticed or pressured into striving to attain a lighter complexion because the standards of beauty in this country are generally pegged on the west’s criteria – white skin, prominent nose bridge, large eyes, etc.
Colonial mentality is alive and “well” to this day, more than 60 years after our last “official” colonizers left our shores!