Eye Candy: The Age of Visual Seduction

Sean Pavone Photo/shutterstock.com

Have you ever stopped to consider the vast number of commercially produced images that we are exposed to in a lifetime? How many of these images would a typical five year old see in a day? “The Wiggles” on the weetbix cereal box, the latest Pixar or Disney character on a backpack at school, Foxtel’s “Dora” on the yoghurt that is eaten at recess; once home again – the K-mart catalogue that is sitting on the kitchen table, the television advertisements that air whilst parents are waiting for the evening news…… and this is before they have ventured out to the mega-market of all visual seduction – the supermarket and the mall.

Those of us who are parents know too well the power of persuasion that visual images have, every time we take our children to the supermarket.  Even those of us who are not parents can see this played out when a disappointed toddler is tearfully expressing himself at the checkout.

Do we as adults appreciate the extent of the role that commercial images have on us? No just in what we feel seduced to buy, but in who we feel seduced to be…… who we think we are supposed to be.

“….every man is really two men – the man he is, and the man he wants to be.”William Feather (American Publisher & Author)

I believe that as adults, we are pretty clued up on the seduction to buy, but I wonder if we are as aware of the subtle influences, the codes that we unconsciously absorb, that lure us into an artificial world pretending to be normal; or a world were cool-ness or class can be bought.

Thank goodness that we know about airbrushing, and photoshop, as if  the whole hair and makeup department was not enough to make one look good!  What does it say to us when we learn that the vast majority of celebrities that grace our magazine covers are airbrushed, and the rare few that aren’t, are considered brave.

Even though we know that all our images are edited and stylized, from the middle-class interiors of our favourite sit-com, to the food in a magazine, or to seeing a majority of young and attractive looking people fill our television screens (both through advertising and program content), not to mention product placement.  When all our images are styled and beautified, and upmarket-ed, even though we know somewhere in the rational part of our brains that this is not the real world…. why then do we still buy into it?  Why did I buy into it? – time and time again….

The fact of the matter is that we are not as rational as we think we are; we are more emotional then rational – and thus lies the power of seduction.

I don’t want the images that my children and I absorb, to be another fairy tale disguised as reality.  I want the images to belong to a conscious and not just a profit margin. I  want the images to portray a true reality in all of our diversity.  Real Life Stories is just an idealistic drop in the ocean, I know…. and I also know that I am no anti-commercial heroine either (I own Havaiana flip flops and used to buy Chanel perfume)… but I do believe that communities can promote change.

In Juliet B Schor’s book “The Overspent American”, the author refers to a ethnographic study by historian Carl Huesemoller Nightingale.  The study refers to really poor children ‘who felt a need to participate in mainstream consumer culture’ and that ‘the status and prestige of consumer products helped them to compensate for their racial and economic exclusion.’  When we look into the subconscious mirror of commercial images, we don’t see ourselves reflected back. What we see is an image that whispers insidiously “Who you are isn’t enough”.  What if commercial images were were more realistic, apart from the financial loss from plummeting sales, I wonder about the possible social gains?  Could it positively influence the statistics on eating disorders, depression and suicide, shop lifting, credit card debt and other social maladies of our time?  What if advertisers could use realistic images in a positive light?  What if people could see their reality reflected back?  There have been some grounds made with reflecting diversity in race, and more recently with gender issues relating to same sex relationships in mainstream media, however,  there is a long way to go with the issue of reflecting reality in our images.