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Walking down the crowded aisles of the supermarket on a faithful Wednesday evening, I stop by a little Coca-cola fridge to pick up (duh) a bottle of coke. Just as I close the fridge and turn my head to walk back down the aisle, my eye catches an interesting little poster. On it, an eye-catching young woman wearing simple yet elegant clothing is showing off her “oh so romantic” diamond wedding ring, with a smiling husband in the background.
I have absolutely no idea what it’s doing in a soft drinks section, but I study it for a while anyway, before deciding that this should be looked through different a lens. I first look at it through my own lens. This poster, or form of media, is telling me that in order to get a woman as beautiful as that (or at all for that matter), I have to buy a diamond ring the size of a small child and go hungry for a few months. It’s telling me that no woman will ever be happy with me unless they have a diamond the size of their future baby welded onto a ring and that proposing with something smaller would be absurd. But that’s just my perspective, the view of a male. On the other hand, from a woman’s point of view, it’s probably telling me that no man is good enough unless he can buy me a ring that big, no matter how nice or honest or loyal he is.
The second pair of lens I’m going to look through today is class, and since I’m of middle wealth, I’ll look through the eyes of the poor and the wealthy. If I was some poor bugger who lived in a cardboard house by a rundown grocery store, this poster would tell me quite a few things: 1. It’s never to late to spend your life saving by buying yourself a ring 2. The only way I’ll ever be noticed as someone who isn’t poor is to have this expensive accessory and 3. Poor people don’t get the good girls, only people who can afford this do. But being rich, on the other hand, will tell me the complete opposite of things. First off, this would just have be another gimmick I’d have to buy to maintain my social status and that I could only impress my future wife with this ring. This may also hint to me that the people who made this ad think that a rich guy like me would have no regard for money whatsoever, but I’d be to busy being a snob to notice. A median of all these things would apply to me.
Last but not least, race. Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we? If I was American, I’d probably have to buy this, as it’s my job to represent the first-world/superpower nation. If I was Asian however, it’d probably be telling me to buy this because I have nothing else to offer to my wife, since I don’t live/come from a first-world country.
All in all, it seems that advertisements can tell you a whole bunch of things (mostly evil things) if you look hard enough. Try it.
