“Born Better”
I have a real issue with this ad…
First, I’d like you to know, my mom thinks I’m crazy. She doesn’t understand “where I came from” with all my ideologies about racism and inequality and how I can see the injustices in anything and everything. Here’s one example of where my mother would say, “it’s just an ad.” But for me, it’s far from JUST anything.
I saw this ad a few times prior to today on the subways in NYC. I thought nothing of it at the time. It was a quick glance, a quick read, and an idea that has been ingrained in us since… well since the time people started conquering other people because they were “inferior.” Can you see where I’m headed?
So today, on the subway, reading my latest issue of Time Magazine (I thoroughly enjoy this magazine. I feel that the magazine tries to come across unbiased and give both sides to the story, which I can appreciate. Of course, one source is never the be all and end all of to any story.) I noticed an ad. An ad for Poland Spring Water. The main point of the ad, “Born Better.” This was the headline and the closing “argument” in their blurb about Poland Spring Water being the best. It says, “Every drop of Poland Spring 100% Natural Spring Water comes from carefully selected natural springs. When you start with something better, you get something better.”
Now my problem isn’t with the water. I drink it. I haven’t researched it to know if it really does come from carefully selected natural springs. These are not the things I contest about the ad. It’s the “Born Better.”
Can something really be born better? No. If you start with something better will you necessarily get something better? Again, no. So why, in society are we reinforcing an ideology that something can be better from birth? This makes me think of Rudyard Kipling and the “White Man’s Burden” and birthrights. Two ideologies that have been disputed and disregarded as unethical, bias, and simply unjust.
This should be JUST an ad, but embedded in this ad is injustice in policy at it’s finest. See, what happens in society is, media saturates our mind with things to the point of acceptance and a level of subconscious behavior. To have an idea read over and over again (on the subway, in magazines, on t.v., etc.) is to have something etched in your mind. We all know repetition embeds things in the brain, come on we all remember the flash cards we made before a test so that it “stuck.” Even though cram session memorization don’t necessarily stick forever, you remember them – at some point in your life you will come across something and a “light” will go off and you will draw back to that flash card. This is the same concept with repetitive ads. Poland Spring might JUST want you to buy their water, but the negative ideology doesn’t lie too far between the lies.
No one is born anything except… well accept born.
notjustmythoughts
notjustmythoughts 