Friday, September 21, 2007

Are you a Carnivore or an herbivore?




A new commercial featuring Alicia Silverstone was just aired in Texas. She is promoting healthy eating and lifestyles. She was however, nude. Apparently being supermodel thin is a healthy lifestyle. Granted not all actresses and models are like this, but there are a fair amount of them. Did the creator really think that a naked woman would make people want to become vegetarians?

I think it is fine to promote healthy eating and vegetarianism, for that matter. However, I don’t think that using near pornographic pictures on public television is the way to do that. The commercial was showing the best possible results of being a vegetarian. People get the wrong idea when they see these ads because all they see is the pretty women. I know that it is all psychological and the audience will be influenced by what they see, not what they hear.

I can’t fail to mention that the sponsor of this ad is PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. So tell me why Alicia Silverstone is posing for an animal rights commercial? So now the commercial has been taken off the air in Texas because of the nudity. I think that if PETA really wanted to convey their message they should have done so in a more conservative way. Had they shown an innocent looking piglet,
I may have been more inclined to listen to their message. Frankly I was just in awe that PETA let a nude women pose for a vegetarian promotion. Now I’m sure that Alicia’s intentions were good, but clothes would have been nice too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think the point of the ad was just want you said was wrong. They used a picture of a naked woman because they knew it would work be a simple way to convince a lot of (simpleminded, in my opinion) people.

It's really not the first time people have done something like that. I remember those Fanta commercials (http://www.blogography.com/photos4/Fantanas.jpg) which was basically just 4 women dancing around in (hideous) skimpy clothes asking you if you want Fanta. The design scheme for the ad is simple: people will associate that object with the product, so if it's a good object (like dancing women, or a naked Alicia Silverstone) people will associate good things with the product when they see it.

But since the product being advertised is a vegetarian lifestyle, I agree with you that the effectiveness of the ad should be questioned. Plus if your saying it was put on public TV, that is a whole different issue.

On the whole, it seems the whole advertisement was inappropriate to just dissuade people from eating meat. But I would love to talk to someone who became a vegetation because of it.