Advertising….why does one ad bother me and the other amuses me?

I promised myself that I wasn’t going to limit my blog posts to only sweet and cute stuff, but things that interest me and even those things that really bother me. With this being NaBloPoMo I even told myself that I was going to step out of my comfort zone once in awhile and post something that might not go over well with some people, but I didn’t care, this was my blog and if something really annoyed me then I wasn’t going to be afraid of any backlash. This is one of those things.

I was working on this post about a few of the new Affordable Care Act (ACA), or more commonly known as Obamacare, ads that came out in Colorado. I admit that I had an immediate aversion to them and was going to go on a bit of a rant about them.

At first glance I thought there was no way it could be real, the things they were conveying about young American men and women was rather degrading and insulting.  By the way, I’m not here to discuss or debate our current healthcare dilemma, I’m only discussing the ads themselves and will totally ignore any and all comments regarding the actual healthcare plan.

My problem with the ads, because there are several, is how the young people of America are portrayed. The ads are written to live up to every, single stereotype the rest of the world has about Americans.  American women are sluts. Americans are so rich that they can party all the time, etc. Take a look at this article about the ads and see what you think.

Seriously? A young woman is standing next to a man and she is holding a packet of birth control pills and all the ad says is “now all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers?”

And this one with three guys doing a keg stand? “Don’t tap into your beer money..”.

This is how they are portraying American youth? Are they humorous? Yes, I suppose they are. But what image are we trying to get across? We need the government to pay for our healthcare so we can be irresponsible and party?

Then this Kmart commercial came out and a huge production was made out of it. But I’m fine with this one, it doesn’t bother me, I think it’s cute and I think people need to get their own underwear out of a twist.

The underwear commercial is just plain cute and imaginative. I can see where some people might think it is tasteless, but take it at face value. Some guys in colorful underwear wiggling their backsides. No worse than some of the women’s underwear commercials I’ve seen. People said it was inappropriate for children. Why? Kids see life very simply. All they see are some guys in colorful underwear wiggling their butts to jingle bells. They’ll laugh and probably get up there and do the same thing. It’s only when you make a big deal out of it that they start feeling something is wrong.

It did make me wonder why I reacted so strongly to the healthcare ads and not the underwear ad. I honestly couldn’t tell you. I’ve read the comments from both sides for both ads and I haven’t changed my opinion. The healthcare ads don’t portray young Americans or Americans in a good light and that I have an issue with. Americans are not very respected worldwide and this doesn’t help. It lives up to the stereotypes that the world has of Americans. The underwear ad is pretty innocent if you don’t go thinking about it too hard. Yeah, I can see where those against the ad are coming from, but get your mind out of the gutter and take it as a cute commercial and leave it at that.

I will say this much though, both advertising campaigns got people talking. Whether it was for or against, the ads were noticed.