"The Science Behind Beauty"

When reading Cook’s analysis of advertising in terms of discourse in general, the concept of various “participants” in the advertisement focused my analysis(considering basic linguistic terms Cook mentions such as the role of the sender and receiver). When thinking of a powerful message that dominates in the advertising world, anti-aging messages are very prevalent. So in choosing two products or advertisements to analyze, I choose two anti-aging formulas, one by L’Oreal Paris and one by Estee Lauder.Both companies have various commercials, posters, etc. but I am looking at the product themselves as found on their websites.

The two ads can be seen here:

http://www.esteelauder.com/products/mpp/regimen.tmpl?CATEGORY_ID=CAT1042

http://www.lorealparis.ca/_en/_ca/brands/index.aspx?code=Collagen_Remodeler&cm_sp=Homepage_Billboard-_-Collagen-_-EN

The first thing to note is that the advertisements have clearly defined intentions concerning audience. Both ads are hard sells, since the product websites are text heavy and lack overall visual appeal. This can probably be explained because these are technically not "advertisements"...they function as extra information for the customer who is already interested in the product. The company is now tasked with convincing the audience with further evidence for its effectiveness as a product.

Estee Lauder’s age-defying serum is called the Perfectionist, the name itself functioning as a rhetorical device, drawing on a human personality trait and immediately creating a statement about the product's abilities. On a contextual level that Cook seeks to engage in, a print advertisement does little to use paralanguage. This fact alone suggests the naming and branding of the product is more important since the advertisement lacks the interest of say a television commercial. In defining the product as a “serum” verses a “cream” even engages the addressees on a language level, drawing on the ethos of the product’s material, since many creams are considered useless by cosmetic users. The words “powerful” and “dramatic” drive the point home to their audience, suggesting that the product user will see exceptional results.

L’Oreal Paris uses language as well to enthuse their audience with confidence for their products. Many anti-aging products today understand the need for scientific proof (an ethos-driven advertising campaign). The title of their one product “Micro-Pulse” engages in a textual ploy by intentional use of scientific terminology to describe their product. The addressee then unconsciously engages in the language from a scientific perspective by receiving the anti-aging message from the linguistic approach of the specific sphere of knowledge. “Science Behind the Beauty” blatantly suggests that the advertising campaign here is fully engaging in a linguistic based approach to persuasion.
While colour, imagery and visual display of the text plays into the advertising campaign, on a deeper level the language of both ads engages the audience in a way that depends on the audience’s understanding of scientific terminology.

Both of these ads challenge the audience, through language, to think of the products in terms of a genre outside of cosmetics and into the world of scientific research. For very little discourse on the effects of the product, the specific word choices make a subtle but powerful kind of influence on a basic level of understanding and categorizing discourse and information.

It's interesting to revisit this post after reading Kilbourne's "The More You Subtract, the More You Add". Beauty products almost squarely rely on this principle to sell their products. Aging is an interesting anxiety, because it ties into the fear of death and the fear of being unattractive. I think it's safe to assume that older women purchasing age-defying serums or creams is an example of the kind of fear instilled in young girls about their identity. In the same way, they are belittled in their wrinkles and grey hair to believe that aging is inappropriate, unattractive, and most of all unnecessary, thanks to such and such a product.
The parallels between adolescents and pre-menopausal women today are uncanny, the quote from Kilbourne’s article reminds me of the kind of experiences a middle aged woman might feel (often called “mid-life crisis”): “As most of us know so well by now, when a girl [woman] enters adolescences [menopause], she faces a series of losses – loss of self-confidence, loss of a sense of efficacy and ambition [perhaps this could be replaced with loss of child-rearing responsibilities or retirement...] and the loss of her ‘voice’” (129). To relook at the effects of bombardment of anti-aging solutions suggests to its audience that there is something inherently unpleasant and perhaps wrong in aging naturally...to resist nature is to resist death. In the same way that a young woman can struggle with eating disorders and body-image anxiety so to can an older woman struggle with the aging process, coming to terms with a new body all over again. The media cannot help but aid in these kinds of messages and with the hormonal changes during this time; it’s possible to be very effective on a woman in a vulnerable state. Estee Lauder’s Perfectionist serum suggests that it repairs as a step in the anti-aging regiment. Repair is an interesting and powerfully intended word choice; it explicitly suggests to its customer that there is something needing to be fixed. The more you subtracted, the more you add.