Who’s That Girl?

You’ve probably seen those commercials with the fabulous looking brunette (with the equally killer body) who looks oh so familiar and yet you can’t quite place her. The ad spots are for RGX and the mysterious brunette is an aspiring actress (quelle choque!), soon to star in Comedy Central’s “Not Another High School Show.” Hey, we all got to start somewhere, right?

Seriously, Girls?

Wake me up when women aren’t assessed first and foremost for their outward appearance. I caught a clip of “Regis & Kelly” while watching the late night news. The pregnant-by-Tom Brady (it’s so trendy, there’s a whole genre of them now) actress Bridget Moynahan had been interviewed that morning on the talk show and was bragging about how she could still fit into her favorite pair of jeans even after X months of being pregnant. She was there to plug that awful ABC melodrama she’s on that’s been renewed after ratings fell so low this Fall that they were forced to go on hiatus. Will ABC ever be able to repay the debt of shelving “Twin Peaks” after only one season?

Back to Moynahan and her pregnancy glow. I couldn’t help but be concerned that I didn’t even know why the actress was on the show since all the only thing being discussed in the short clip provided by the news station was how beautiful she was. Of course, the news anchors smiling with their vaseline coated teeth was distracting as well, but then, they too were gushing with pride about Bridget’s appearance. Local hometown girl pride aside (Bridget was born in Western, MA), even I felt a bit like gagging.

And then I read this piece produced by the IJWC (International Jewish Women’s Council) about putting a stop to low female self-esteem and how young girls have such idealized notions of beauty that low self esteem is inevitable. The jargon is nothing new, mind you. It was simply ironic that I came across the piece just after the Brady-Moynahan gag reflex set in. And because seeing a picture these days of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Ritchie, or Paris Hilton for that matter, doesn’t exactly equate with “idealized.” More like, run from stardom/”fake beauty” as fast as you can so that you never end up like them. If anything then, the paparazzi has helped bring these stars down to a level that not only humanizes them, but actually makes them less appealing.

I’m not encouraging the paparazzi to stalk stars. Simply stating that the need to celebrate Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, as ICJW is doing, is just as superficial in its own way. It’s simply emulating a different cult of beauty and one that falls more in line with the women who promote it. We shouldn’t have to look to beauty campaigns to find “real” beauty.

Geico Cavemen Reign Over Primetime?

The Geico Cavemen as urbane sophisticate is the commercial hit of the year. Jewcy’s Meryl Yourish blogged about their appeal in a post back in July of last year and I’ve been holding back the laughs for a while now, but more as a reaction to my sense of humor falling short with the cavemen’s subtle laugh riot approach. Honestly, they aren’t that funny to me. But it would seem I’m definitely in the minority here and since prime time TV favors majority, my two cents ain’t worth a whole lot.Ok, so the cavemen are preferable to the Geico Gecko of yesteryear, but do they outperform the “Celebrity as Translator” campaign with Little Richard? I think not. Then again, the end product being does anyone even know what Geico sells anyways?

I saw recently on an episode of “CBS Sunday Morning” that the two Geico campaigns that I mentioned above are running simultaenously. The reason being that each favors a gender with the translator clips appealing to women more and the cavemen commericials appealing to men. So this would also help explain why I’m not particularly fond of the cavemen.

But clips and gender aside, ABC has already leased the cavemen and produced a pilot with three cavemen living in modern day Atlanta. And as Slate’s Seth Stevenson explains, it might just succeed:

First, let’s remind ourselves that super-high-concept sitcoms are nothing new. Third Rock From the Sun = “We’re aliens and we can’t tell anyone.” Small Wonder = “Our daughter is a robot.” These shows achieved relative success, so who’s to say “We’re cultivated cavemen” can’t do the same?There’s even precedent for advertising icons succeeding on other platforms. The news stories about the cavemen’s pilot all mention Baby Bob—the one-time dot-com spokesbaby who later had his own sitcom (and later still got back into ads). A friend also reminded me that Ernest, Jim Varney’s redneck caricature (”KnowhutImean, Vern?”) began as a pitchman before landing a kids’ TV show (and then a string of hallucinogenically plotted films—see e.g., 1997’s Ernest Goes to Africa).