Bad Infomercial, Baaadddddd…
So I was up pretty late last night, not something unusual for me, so anyhow, I was flipping through the channels when a particular commercial on the Instyler Rotating Hot Iron, a “new and revolutionary hair miracle,” caught my attention. Now, as much as I was amazed by said product and tempted into buying it then and there, I could not help but notice that throughout the demonstration the women who’s hair was being made “beautiful and sexy” were being brought down by the spokes model and celebrity hairstylist. Throughout the exaggerated infomercial the stylist constantly calls out the women on their hair faults by announcing how the product will bring body and shine to their “lifeless and limp hair” or tame their “out-of-control mane.” Now, I know that this is yet another marketing technique that urges women identify with a given problem so that they feel that they need and want to buy whatever product is being advertised, but it is still extremely blow-up just to make an impression. I mean, even my roommate exclaimed, “That’s me!” when the stylist described one of the devastating hair problems that was about to be fixed, when I honestly could not see what she was talking about. But still, I think that there are better ways of getting an audience to want to buy a product that does have to employ methods that will hurt views into felling that they need to buy something that promises to make their lives easier and more beautiful. With this, I feel that instead of helping women improve an aspect of themselves the promoters of the product only hurt women’s self-esteem and confidence. Just the tone that the stylist used when describing the hair problems of the women he was working on would have been enough to make me feel pretty bad about myself, I could only imagine how badly I would have felt if I was one of the women being criticized on national television.
