Friday, September 2, 2011

On Edmonton's Own Ad Scandal

So, the big news here in Edmonton is the below advertisement, from Fluid Hair Salon. It was actually created and launched a year ago, but was only caught by bloggers and made big in the last couple days. Since then, women's rights groups in the city have been up in arms, and it's not hard to see why.

A well-coiffed woman sits on a chair in front of a frightening Dexter-type man, sporting a nasty looking black eye. The caption "Look good in all you do" implies, sort of, that as long as she looks good eventually, with a shiny new necklace, abuse is just fine. It's a risky and dark ad, and I personally don't think that a salon should be touching this subject with a 10 foot pole, but that's just me.



However, up until now I'll admit that I wasn't that interested or insulted by this little controversy. It was a very misled "artsy" ad that never really got big before now, and in a way it actually does some good by bringing needed attention to the issue of domestic violence. 

What actually got me intrigued is that somewhere out there, someone was mad enough to vandalize the salon. Here are a couple pics from CBC:




"This is art that is wrongly named violence; that was violence wrongly named art!"
It's sort of poetic.

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