Smarmy TV ad

As if there aren't enough potential barriers to getting in one's workout! This bugs me almost every time I go to the gym, since unfortunately, the odds are good that this particular ad will air on their in-house TV network during the time I'm there. I'm assuming it's for some clinic that does some kind of hair removal. I say I'm assuming because I still don't know -- I have yet to pay attention long enough to find out. Probably safe to say I'm not in their target market. Anyway, what irks me is their pitch: a woman's voiceover says something like "Such-and-such percent of the human body is covered by hair." They then show a model, discretely nude (you know what I mean by this: shot from above, as non-threatening and assexual as possible, filmed through a filter so as to remove the "blatant nakedness" feel, yet retaining just enough glamour to grab your attention) and looking smugly up to the camera. The woman's voice-over continues: "Fortunately, we can fix that."

This never fails to startle me, mainly, because as she starts to say "Fortunately, we can....", my mind expects to hear, "...change that." But fix? Fix that? Huh. I didn't know that the presence of hair automatically warrants a fix. Call me old-fashioned, but I actually like having, oh, eyebrows, eyelashes, hair on the top of my head, and yes, even those fine, soft, blond hairs on my forearm. Sure, there are some choice topographical zones in which hair is best kept missing, but given that these are somewhat in the minority, percentage-wise, to the total surface area of skin, it seems a tad....oh I don't know, OCD?....to suggest that hair in of itself is a bad thing worthy of elimination, which to me is what happens when you use the word, "fix." Yes, I "get" that the writers are trying to create some kind of an urgency ("Oh my gosh, you have all this hair! Hurry!"), but I still think they went a bit overboard and thus missed the boat on this one.

And now, I can free up what clearly has been way too much brain real estate dedicated to analysing this one topic!