Not all abuse is physical. Some is the result of psychological warfare. For 42 years, I seemed to be receiving coded messages that something was wrong. They came from seemingly likable billboard ads, pop songs and TV comedy skits. The queasiness, t...
For a few weeks in the early 2000s, while I was driving home from work on Interstate 64 east of downtown Louisville, the night was momentarily lit up for me by one of those passing interludes created by the outdoor advertising industry.
Commuters heading eastbound had our full attention seized by a billboard with just a few unrevealing words, but a fetching image of a smiling, pretty, smartly styled young woman – not sexed up, but caressingly charming.
What little narrative there was in the ad for an upscale office park hinted that this softly effervescent woman was a workplace brightening receptionist or secretary, so yes, the message reflected a longtime gender role stereotype.
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A reasonable facsimile of the billboard woman who gave me such mixed feelings.
Still, taken in isolation from those words, there was not a thing wrong with the image. This young woman's pleasant face and impish smile were a nice break after an eight-hour clerk job doing surveys and crunching numbers in a busy data center.
Yet the sensation the ad left me with was twofold. Every night as I passed the billboard at the same hour, her expression also unsettled me, and deep down inside it even disturbed me just a bit.
The contradictory feelings of pleasure and wariness weren't separate; it was as though they were one. Maybe there was a little of the "Siren Song" effect, that combination of enticement and danger described in Greek myth of men who sail to their deaths irresistibly lured by females' singing.
Not really, though – the image on this billboard was of a wholesome, real world young adult with a bubbly, unmythical air.
The face of such an appealing and non-aloof young woman -- what's not to like? Yet, when approaching the ad each evening in the post-9 p.m. dark, I was unconsciously fortifying myself for the ritual of gazing it. There was some tiny quadrant of my consciousness which would rather not face her, as though an onslaught, rather than an eye treat was coming. I suppose it would make sense that a male, say, with his significant other or spouse seated next to him might be a little jittery traveling toward this ad.
I, however, was single, unattached and alone on this nightly commute home.
What in the name of the almighty advertising industry could possibly cause this model's eminently winsome smile to put me even the tiniest bit on edge?
Her grin and bespectacled eyes, though appropriately contained for office demeanor, were vibrant in a way that suggested she was perhaps amused, not just contented, as she looked to her right – at what, we don't know.
