From web, weirdcore II //NAME???//[]
This rather amusing compilation of stock photography from The Hairpin demonstrates a silly convention in commercial advertising: “Women Laughing Alone With Salad”. (See also: Women Struggling to Drink Water, This Pile of Bills is Making Me Touch My Head and Men Laughing Alone With Fruit Salad.) Like a word repeated until it begins to sound bizarre and nonsensical, these familiar generic images begin to feel weird and unsettling when viewed in succession.
Seen altogether, this collection of generic pictures exposes how little we scrutinize the meaningless (and yet, so meaningful) imagery we are bombarded with in contemporary culture. What is really troubling about these women laughing alone with salad is how normal they seem. In real life, if I threw on my generic cotton tee, slathered on a face full of make up and started maniacally laughing over a bowl of undressed lettuce, I would seem insane. Yet, these images present a convincing idea of what the healthy, happy, “normal” woman should look like (and what they should eat). I know these collections of generic photographic tropes were compiled as a funny observation about the world of commercial imagery, but they really drive home a rather serious point. For me, they sum up one of the reasons why I think contemporary art is culturally important: it attempts interrogate and offer an alternative to this kind of empty imagery that saturates mainstream culture.
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“Women Laughing Alone With Salad” also reminds me of the very funny 9 Things I Learned About the World According to Stock Model Photography from the always irreverent Maddox (The Best Page in the Universe). My favourite observations from his list include “Hot curly haired black women go moist for wireless broadband routers and mainframes”, and “One-handed, one-knee laptop bullshit is the preferred way to get work done”.
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Images above via The Hairpin; images to the left via The Best Page in the Universe.
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Hey single ladies: Laugh it up with lettuce
The "Women Who Eat Salad Alone While Laughing" Tumblr blog pays homage to the hilarious absurdity of stock photos showing ladies enjoying their veggies too much.
Feb. 14, 2014 11:05 a.m. PT
Nothing is more depressing than eating a salad alone while staring out the window hoping to catch your neighbors doing something entertaining.
While most of us don't generally eat a Cobb salad while maniacally laughing in an empty room, apparently this is standard behavior in the world of advertising. The reality presented by stock photography portrays women eating salad as though it's the highlight of their lives.
Originally inspired by a post from The Hairpin, the Tumblr blog Women Who Eat Salad Alone While Laughing features stock imagery used by various companies, ads, and online magazines doing exactly what the title implies.
The blog is "devoted to the bizarre stock photo trend of women looking way too happy to be eating salad, sometimes literally in the middle of cracking up laughing at their hilarious greens, while alone," the blog says.
Why advertisers and magazines feel compelled to show the euphoric qualities of eating salad is a mystery, but this blog seems to have struck a nerve with so many people that it also posts photos sent in by readers posing with their own salads while laughing.
Even "The Ellen Degeneres Show" recently did a segment about the blog in its "World Wide Whaat?" segment.
"Who doesn't go to a salad bar and burst out laughing?" Degeneres asked during the segment. "It would be more relatable if it was 'Women Laughing Alone With Wine.' I would understand that."
Indeed. So the next time you eat salad alone, be sure to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
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Women Laughing Alone With Salad
Apparently salad knows all the best jokes… at least according to stock photo sites that for some weird reason portray women as overly excited about hanging out with salad while alone at home.
9 things I learned about the world according to anonymous[]
stock photo models.
I was searching for shitty telecom companies the other day and Qwest came up as the first result (the 2nd through 6th results linked to Verizon). So I clicked the top link and saw this:
"Finally," I thought to myself, "a site that sells chubby black women." Unfortunately, after hours of searching there were no black women to be found; only DSL and local phone service. Here are some other photos I found on corporate websites, and what I learned about the world based on the images:
1. Attempts to portray sincere parent/child relationships always seem creepy.[]
There aren't many things I don't want to experience in life, but the sensual caress of a parent going through mid-life crisis is one of them.
2. Hot curly haired black women go moist for wireless broadband routers and mainframes.[]
Possibly the first and only cliche in history I've wanted to bang, curly-haired black women are the preferred marketing tool to sell obscure telecom products and telephone services so long as their skin tone isn't too dark. She should be dark enough to score that hip diversity dollar, but not so dark as to scare away that heartland racist dollar.
Microsoft also tried to employ use of the hot black woman for marketing Vista recently, but as usual, they got it wrong:
"Fuck it." -Microsoft's advertising agency
3. People who sit in cramped cubicles answering customer service calls in drab corporate callcenters are overjoyed to help fix your DSL modem.[]
Meet Ron:
I don't know Ron, but I guarantee you that Ron has never said "allow us to provide you with excellent customer service." In fact, I'd be willing to bet that Ron provides satisfactory, but not excellent customer service, jerks it to manga, gets in heated arguments over Battlestar Galactica, and hates his job because his boss doesn't appreciate him enough. But some day Ron will get his degree in computer science, quit his job, and then his boss will be sorry for not paying Ron more! Until then, he's an undersexed shill. Unless the beefy, goateed computer programmer look is making a comeback, and based on personal experience, it hasn't.
Here's another gem. Can you guess why this man is smiling?
There are only three reasons you should ever be this delighted about anything, and all of them involve you being a hot chick, meeting me, and lube.
4. At least 1 in 3 people chosen at random will necessarily be "African American," even though only 13% of the US population is black.[]
When a corporation claims to be diverse, what they really mean is that they hire black people, asians, and a latino every now and then. There is no image more meticulously engineered in this world than that of a corporation's statement on "diversity." For example, the energy company Entergy states on its website that the cornerstone of their corporate culture is:
respect ... for every individual regardless of race, gender, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or any other cultural factor. "Tolerance" is insufficient in this organization that values differences...
Entergy should be commended for having the courage to go beyond simply "tolerating" different races by treating them with respect, because it is assumed that other races are not treated with respect unless a corporation explicitly states that they do on their website. The world needs more companies willing to follow Entergy's bold leadership by doing more than just tolerating other races.
5. The amount of forced enthusiasm you have for a commercial product is directly proportional to how big of an asshole you are.[]
The Kashi cereal "Satisfaction Squad:"
If you could divide-by-zero when calculating the size of an asshole, this is what it would look like:
6. Kids love manual labor.[]
Apparently what's good for kids is to make them wash your car.
I've only had one dream in my life with kids in it that didn't involve me gnawing my feet off, and it had to do with kids doing my laundry.
7. That one-handed, one-knee laptop bullshit is the preferred way to get real work done.[]
Casual, yet all business.
8. Random-ass white dudes should be placed all over your corporate website for no fucking reason.[]
Thanks for the superfluous visual aid, random cowboy dipshit! We couldn't have inferred what you meant by "hats off" without it!
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This is an unedited clip from an actual anti-smoking brochure. I'm going to assume Mike is the fat one, and the other kid's name is Jerry. Here's how I envision the conversation went immediately after Mike's confession:
Mike: I think my parents would be very disappointed if I ever smoked.
Jerry: Hey, thanks for sharing your feelings with me Mike. Smoking's totally not cool. I'm glad we feel the same way.
Mike: Really?
Jerry: No, limp dick! I'm going to light up a fat blunt and then I'm going to rape your mouth!
3,845,516 people have a skewed perception of reality due to their inability to recognize subtle corporate propaganda.
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© 1997-2017 by Maddox
Source[]
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=stock_photos
|references=[]
https://ridiculouslyinteresting.com/2011/11/07/women-laughing-alone-with-salad-2/
https://www.cnet.com/culture/hey-single-ladies-laugh-it-up-with-lettuce/