Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Is There a Prescription for Stupidity?

When I first saw a commercial for Latisse I thought it was a joke. Who could have thought that having short or, to quote their promotional website, "inadequate" eyelashes was a medical condition that needed prescription medication. The name of this condition is "hypotrichosis", which according to Latisses's website is "another name for having inadequate or not enough eyelashes." Inadequate for what? I want to ask. Not enough for whom?

To make matters worse, the makers of the product have no idea how (or even if) this quasi-scientific goop works: "LATISSE® is believed to affect the growth (anagen) phase of the eyelash hair cycle in two ways: first, it increases the length of this phase; and second, it increases the number of hairs in this growth phase. The exact way it works is unknown." Notice the "Latisse is believed" part. Believed by whom? The crooks trying to sell this junk as medication? The women who are duped into thinking that having "not enough" lashes is a disease?

Since there are still honest doctors who will be unwilling to prescribe this junk to their patients, Latisse's website offers a Find-a-Doctor tool that gives you an address of a doctor who will prescribe this "medication" to you.

The website gives you advice on "how to make the most of your treatment" (treatment again, reinforcing the idea that women with short lashes are not only "inadequate" but also sick). Part of the advice goes as follows: "When you start using LATISSE® solution, be sure to mark your calendar and take pictures throughout weeks (0, 4, 8, 12, 16), so you can have your own "Before & After Gallery." And then do what with the gallery, I wonder? Put it up on your wall and show it off to guests? Carry it around with you in your wallet? Post it on a website as a monument to how you allowed another dishonest pharmaceutical company to dupe you into thinking that looking the way you do is a disease that needs yet another prescription?

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is just another example of somebody desperately trying to find a market for some product of questionable usefulness. This one is actually quite harmless, compared, for example, with the current boom of the cosmetic surgery. Which is actually becoming scarier and scarier. There are soap operas built around the issue of plastic surgery, there are all sorts of "extreme makeover" shows, there are "medical shows" about cosmetic surgery on Discovery channel, etc. And I hear about more and more acquaintances of acquaintances who gave in to the pressure and did some cosmetic surgery to "get better chances to get a job" (no, not as a TV anchor, as a nurse, for Pete's sake)... Not even "better chances with men" as it used to be...
V.

Clarissa said...

Nobody knows how harmless this product is. Their website says it can change your eye color permanently. God only knows what consequences of its use customers will discover in 10 years.

As to cosmetic surgery, I know a 15-year-old girl who had a nose job. The very idea scares me. This is so wrong.

Anonymous said...

"When you start using LATISSE® solution, be sure to mark your calendar and take pictures throughout weeks (0, 4, 8, 12, 16), so you can have your own "Before & After Gallery." - this is my favorite too. It is not enough to stimulate eating disorders to have larger market for diet regiments, diet pills, scales, etc, now they are trying to create new disorders... In this case "eyelashes disorder"...
I just tried to invent some new kind of dysmorphic disorder one could stimulate as a business idea. But somehow I cannot mobilize enough brainpower or enough cynicism, so nothing comes to mind. Or maybe it is because they already made a subject of some disorder out of all body parts and the eyelashes were the last one still untouched?.. Until now...
V.

Clarissa said...

In the book "Selling Sickness", the authors quote a memo that circulated in a pharmaceutical coompany and that proposed creating a disorder for everybody.

As to the body parts that are still untouched by this insanity, I just read on a feminist site about a new disorder or syndrome or whatever that causes you to have thick ankles. So there is still a way to go. What about people with inordinately thin ankles, for example? Or lashes that are too long?

Anonymous said...

I guess it is the most serious non-Marxist argument (or were there some neo-Marxist theories which focus on exploitation of consumers, not the proletariat?) against the market economy - that market economy actually needs to ruin mental health of the people in order to preserve and develop itself. The niches for marketing based on rational usefulness arguments are running out. The goal now is to make people consume various products and services by making them believe that without said services and products the consumers will be not worthy of love, respect and other similar non-measurable but extremely valuable things. (It is not a new phenomenon, of course, but there seems to be more and more of it in affluent societies where all material necessities are already satisfied without creating any more love, including self-love, to float around.)
Imagine what happens to modern economy if by some miracle people gain significantly more self-esteem and become disinterested in products creating illusions of increased self-worth? The crisis will be pretty bad...
V.

Clarissa said...

"were there some neo-Marxist theories which focus on exploitation of consumers, not the proletariat?)"

-Tons. Most neo-Marxists have abandoned the idea of the proletariat because it doesn't exist in the same form it did when Marx was writing. Now it's all about "poor consumers." I personally have a problem with the idea that bad, mean, nasty advertisement makes us buy things we don't need and that's so sad. What would people do with the money otherwise if not spend it?

Medication, however, is a different thing than buying one more Ipod. Ipod can't destroy your health, while medication can. The same way that tobacco companies were stopped from advertising on TV, pharmaceutical companies need to be stopped too.

Anonymous said...

I guess it is complex issue. The advertisement industry obviously exploits "normal neurosis" of the society. And sometimes it just makes the next obvious step and attempts to actively shape that "normal neurosis" to marketers' advantage. It does not make advertisement industry more bad, evil or nasty than society in general. In the same time advertisement industry is a part of the society and of its neurosis. So it is a bit of a chicken-versus-egg thing.

But if you ask me what to do with money if not spend it - I have an answer: work less, enjoy life more, let others earn a decent living too.

Your argument about tobacco can be taken in many different ways. What about the following: shouldn't mental "poisons" be at least as suspect as physical (chemical, pharmacological) ones? Especially taking into account the widespread idea that most of the chemical ones are consumed for psychological reasons anyway?..
V.

Clarissa said...

"But if you ask me what to do with money if not spend it - I have an answer: work less, enjoy life more, let others earn a decent living too."

-This is great advice and I couldn't agree more, as you know. But I don't think that absence of advertising would make this happen. I disagree with people who say that advertising makes us buy what we don't need. There is a deep-seated, subconscious need that advertising taps into but I do not believe that it actually creates the need or the desire. In this, I differ greatly from most cultural studies critics. It's just easier to blame advertising than to recognize these hidden needs and the psychological reasons for them.

"What about the following: shouldn't mental "poisons" be at least as suspect as physical (chemical, pharmacological) ones?"

-I'm not sure I know what you mean by mental poisons.

Anonymous said...

----I'm not sure I know what you mean by mental poisons.

Manipulating with peoples' insecurities.
V.

Clarissa said...

Manipulating, yes. Creating insecurities, no. You can't create an insecurity where there is no space for it.

Anonymous said...

So how do the insecurities appear in the first place?
V.

Clarissa said...

Family environment, of course. The way a person is brought up. Wouldn't you agree?