All right. I'll admit to being a little obsessed with advertising campaigns. I think it might have to do with the fact that I don't currently have a television, so it doesn't take much for an ad to seem titillating.
Yes, titillating. Check out this ad from Allergan Medical. It's a photo of a smiling woman -- who presumably just received a pair of Allergan silicone breast implants -- with the tagline "You've Never Looked Smarter."
Weird, right? I mean, first of all, as Pandagon points out in its "I'm so empowerful, I can rest my chin on my new boobs" post, aren't big breasts supposed to make you seem, like, dumber?
Don't worry -- I don't actually think big breasts mean you're stupid. But since that's the stereotype, why this tagline? Pandagon suggests a theory that I think may be right: Breast implant companies don't want women to refrain from amping up their cup size out of fear that larger boobs will make them seem dumb. (In Pandagon's words, "They have some reason to believe that the one thing holding women back from getting our tits stuffed with silicone is the fear that everyone will think we're stone-cold bimbos if we do it.") As long as the implant company assures women that they can have boobs and their Ph.D.s, why not have surgery?
Well, as the Food and Drug Administration points out, there's always risk of complications. (What's a little necrosis among friends?) But to me, the weird thing is that to either strongly agree or strongly disagree with this ad is to buy in to the notion that breast size actually has anything to do with intelligence. Because as we all know, boob size does nothing to the intelligence of the person they're attached to -- the only brain power it can affect is of the person staring at them.
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