Feb 11, 2010
BE PRETTY AND VOTE
Sois Belle Et Vote (‘Be Pretty and Vote’ ) was a sentence used for a political advertising campaign that took place in Lebanon in 2009 by the occasion of the parliamentary elections.
Together with this sentence the billboards showed an image of
a young woman, as commonly represented by fashion and beauty brands. This controversial advertisement, being accused as sexist and offensive, brought up reactions at different levels among these, new versions of this image, whose content was changed according with the protests.
What happens in this specific situation is that the adoption of an aesthetics is not only used to communicate and idea to a particular audience – the young hip Lebanese women – but mostly aims to create a public discussion based on its controversial aspects and consequently generating visibility and promotion for its own benefit. This is not something surprising when thinking about political advertising but what is interesting to note here is that the appropriation of this kind of aesthetics (even if still operating at a commodified level) serves not only the purpose of this campaign as, propaganda, visibility, public discussion, etc, but also by making the appropriation itself visible, indirectly exposes the structure which is based on.
By critically examining political advertising and the different ways it has been dealing with the existing media structures, I believe one can find an interesting place for observing advertising and mass media structures.