What are they selling?
The salon is called "Cut + Blo".
This is the picture they had in the window yesterday immediately under the words "Cut + Blo".
The Serpentine One said, "Not exactly subtle."
So what are they selling?
That may look like a rhetorical question but it's not. Yes, of course, they are selling sex. But what kind of sex?
A good way to get a grip on that is to ask, "Who are they selling this sex to?" Because the answer to that is "women". This is a hair salon for women and they are only going to make money if that picture makes their customers feel like they have come to the right place. So take a look at the picture again and consider what sort of sexual scenario is likely to follow if a woman gives a guy that look? Now consider that, for this advertising to work (and it does work), there have to be a substantial number of women who want to evoke that response.
No I won't spell it out but the key point here is that the appeal for the woman who buys this stuff is to emphasize what he can make her do for him rather than her intrinsic worth. And not because she is some sort of expert practitioner; the image here is a of a woman not quite in control of herself or, as the Robert Palmer song had it, "The lights are on but you're not home." Cut and blow indeed! (For extra bonus points, take a good long look at the picture, then see what sort of images that come up when you Google "Pre Raphaelite Women" and consider what a paradoxical word "innocence" is. )
To paraphrase Kant, any properly humanist morality will treat human beings as ends rather than means. A woman who seeks that sort of presentation is emphasizing her worth as a means not an end.
And let's not kid ourselves, this stuff works. Not all women but lots of women (particularly young women) see that sort of advertising and they reach for their wallets. This isn't some odd quirky approach that only this salon has adopted. Lots and lots of people have managed to not go broke with this approach.
Yeah, I know the official line: Women only do this to themselves because society puts all sorts of pressures on them to live up to these awful male fantasies. That's why the more rights and freedoms women have gotten, the more they have tended to dress like nuns maybe? Alternatively, maybe it's time to give up on Kant.
Over to you Mr. Palmer:
The salon is called "Cut + Blo".
This is the picture they had in the window yesterday immediately under the words "Cut + Blo".
The Serpentine One said, "Not exactly subtle."
So what are they selling?
That may look like a rhetorical question but it's not. Yes, of course, they are selling sex. But what kind of sex?
A good way to get a grip on that is to ask, "Who are they selling this sex to?" Because the answer to that is "women". This is a hair salon for women and they are only going to make money if that picture makes their customers feel like they have come to the right place. So take a look at the picture again and consider what sort of sexual scenario is likely to follow if a woman gives a guy that look? Now consider that, for this advertising to work (and it does work), there have to be a substantial number of women who want to evoke that response.
No I won't spell it out but the key point here is that the appeal for the woman who buys this stuff is to emphasize what he can make her do for him rather than her intrinsic worth. And not because she is some sort of expert practitioner; the image here is a of a woman not quite in control of herself or, as the Robert Palmer song had it, "The lights are on but you're not home." Cut and blow indeed! (For extra bonus points, take a good long look at the picture, then see what sort of images that come up when you Google "Pre Raphaelite Women" and consider what a paradoxical word "innocence" is. )
To paraphrase Kant, any properly humanist morality will treat human beings as ends rather than means. A woman who seeks that sort of presentation is emphasizing her worth as a means not an end.
And let's not kid ourselves, this stuff works. Not all women but lots of women (particularly young women) see that sort of advertising and they reach for their wallets. This isn't some odd quirky approach that only this salon has adopted. Lots and lots of people have managed to not go broke with this approach.
Yeah, I know the official line: Women only do this to themselves because society puts all sorts of pressures on them to live up to these awful male fantasies. That's why the more rights and freedoms women have gotten, the more they have tended to dress like nuns maybe? Alternatively, maybe it's time to give up on Kant.
Over to you Mr. Palmer:
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