Only their mother could tell them apart
Most marketing people will be happy to tell you, over some stupid designer lunch, that image is all. Never mind the product: if it doesn’t look like something Paris Hilton would want to wear, drink, snort or fuck, just forget about it.
Since masses of people simply love this dumb type of ‘can do’ manager speak, they will buy the message and get with the program.
At times, this makes for some very strange results - and even weirder make-overs:
A small religious group that worships the grim reaper and is fighting for government recognition unveiled a softer image of their Death Saint today: a woman with a porcelain face, brown, shoulder-length hair and long thin fingers.
Hundreds of worshippers filed into the Santa Muerte sanctuary in central Mexico City to see the statue in a flowing golden dress and veil, clutching a rose. She offers another option to followers who have traditionally prayed to figures of a skeleton dressed in a black cloak and carrying a scythe, or in a long flowing white gown.
So, same death – but now sporting tits.
Still, image is important. If you want to be taken seriously you need to look the part. ‘Cute’ will only get you so far in certain circumstances.
There’s a good reason Darwin didn’t coin the phrase, ‘Survival of the cuddliest.’ A few species now are slowly getting the message that, if they don’t want to turn into some kind of sixties’ motto like ‘Live fast, die young and leave a cute-looking corpse’, they’d better change their image fast.
One of the big problems with image – and looks in general – is that they can be quite deceptive. Mistakes can and will be made. Some you can shrug off, claiming, with some right, that anyone would have taken this person for some kind of children’s book character or that guy for a comedian.
Sometimes though, things can become highly embarrassing, very fast. You know, there is a very good reason that there are many sayings like ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover.’ The reason is that people tend to make these mistakes all the bloody time…
and talking of books and covers…:
Bestselling author Stephen King was mistaken for a vandal as he horrified an Australian outback bookstore.
A customer at the store in remote Alice Springs raised the alarm after noticing a man walk in off the street and begin writing in several books, manager Bev Ellis told national radio.
“As the owner of a bookshop, when you see someone writing in one of your books you get a bit touchy. So we immediately ran to the books and lo-and-behold here was the signature in several books. We sort of spun around on our heels, saying ‘Where did he go, where did he go’?”
Meanwhile, on another continent, a woman walks into a hotel…
She was wearing a Mayan dress, the traditional attire of indigenous people in central America, and the hotel’s response was also traditional: throw her out.
Staff at Cancun’s five-star Hotel Coral Beach appear to have assumed this was another street vendor or beggar, so without asking questions they ordered her to leave. Except the woman was Rigoberta Menchú, the Nobel peace prizewinner, Unesco goodwill ambassador, Guatemalan presidential candidate and figurehead for indigenous rights.
So, when you, like those idiot marketing people, do insist on judging things by looks & image alone, better get it right at first sight. Otherwise, you might be the one who ends up looking ridiculous - or ends up getting fired:
District officials plan to fire three corrections officers who failed to realize a woman was being held in the male detention unit at the D.C. jail last month even after she had been strip-searched and allowed to shower with male inmates.
Virginia Grace Soto, 47, was arrested on July 14 and thought to be a man despite her repeated protests otherwise, according to two internal reports by D.C. police and the Department of Corrections.
The reports reveal that Soto was arrested twice since April and that both times officials classified her as a man.
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