“Beauty is rare and hard to achieve.”
This is the message the Nader Saab Clinic conveys to women in Lebanon. Billboards announcing this slogan span the Beirut roads, all the way from the airport to the hospital itself in Adonis.
Nader Saab is a plastic surgery clinic that whose major profits are a result of the social pressure on women to look “beautiful,” and this specific ad is the perfect reflection of that.
“Beauty is hard to achieve,” they say, so, head over to our premises, pay your money and we will work our magic to make you “beautiful,” something you cannot achieve naturally.
Nader Saab is yet another corporation trying to drag women into the same vicious circle that other companies and ad agencies make profit from, showing women an unreal image and making them feel left out, ugly even, if they don’t look like that specific stereotype.
Busted Ad: "Beauty is relative and can not be stereotyped"
The more dangerous part of this ad is the underlying message of the statement itself: beauty is rare, and hard to achieve without intervention.
Beauty is something undefined and relative, and there is no specific person or plastic surgeon who can or should allow themselves to define it and apply it as a norm.
We would like to take this chance to give some free advice in the form of a more realistic message to all women (and men):
Beauty is relative. Beauty cannot and should not be stereotyped.
It is absolutely unethical for a hospital to advertise itself using words that make women believe they can never look good unless they undergo plastic surgery (or surgeries).
To quote a cliché, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
It is not difficult to find, and it most certainly is not a rarity that can only be found once surrounded with Botox, silicon, and has had any form of fat sucked out of it.
Go ahead, ladies, look into the mirror. There. That’s beauty right there.
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3 Comments
I think that the author has misunderstood this ad and given Nader Saab an unwarranted bashing. This is obviously an ad that’s alluding to Nader Saab’s name to advertise a cream. It is NOT a Nader Saab ad! Of course, this doesn’t mean that it does not contain a stereotypical message.
There is nothing wrong with the message here. Beauty is indeed rare and hard to achieve. There is even a genetic study to show that. What men perceive as beautiful is contained in our genes but not all genes, only recessive (rare) alleles. For example, the blue eyes are not dominant alleles but recessive alleles. This applies to beautiful small nose, nice cheekbones, eye colors, and blonde hair color. So what is said in the ad is correct and you must dissociate between people who r trying to sell beauty and people who are trying to objectivize women. Selling beauty is essential becz beauty is also HEALTHY! Being skinny (wether u did lipo or just a restricitve diet) is very healthy and it’s better than accumulating belly fats and stuff….
Whether I agree with Kherr Berr’s article or not is irrelevant here, I’m just going to comment on something that you said.
Yes, blue eyes are recessive, brown eyes are dominant. Yes, blonde hair is recessive, yes, dark hair is dominant. Yes, light skin is recessive, yes, dark skin is dominant. And a lot of co-dominance in between.
This does not make the recessive genes, or those who possess them, more beautiful than others.
I happen to be find women with dark hair and brown eyes much better looking than blonde women with blue eyes, who you might find gorgeous. Someone else might fetishise women with green eyes and red hair. I think the point here is that beauty is relative, and each person can be beautiful in their own way. I might look at someone and find them hideous, while someone else might find them a divine dream. I don’t think society, or the media and magazines, or any plastic surgeon has the right to be telling you what features constitute “a beautiful woman.”
Add to that – obese or very overweight is not healthy, and anyone with some sense knows it. But since you’re speaking genes, genes do play a role in mass determination, and you can be predisposed to being heavier. Some people might have problems, and be unable to shed the pounds no matter how much they try. How can any self respecting person with a mind have the balls to tell them they are not beautiful, and can never be unless they undergo extreme surgical makeovers or stock up on the pills and creams and teas and indulge in meals of 0.5g of tofu garnished with one mustard seed every other day to be skinny Kate Moss types?
Media dictates you have to be something of a size subzero (zero is so two years ago) stick figure to be beautiful. Well, fuck that. I happen to like curves, I don’t want my girlfriend’s bony anorexic skeletal figure poking holes in me. Enough with the media bullshit (local and international) CONVINCING all these women on so many levels that they can’t be beautiful and that they need to do extreme shit.
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