By Rae Hodge–
When I saw the Baptist Health billboard, I was cruising at a steady 60mph on the Watterson eastbound, between the Poplar Level and Newburg exits. It was in the first days of a record heat wave, and as the sweat crawled down my bra straps, I thought at first that I might be having a stroke.
“Sensitive. Just like a woman.”
The condescending subtext was so obvious and alive, it might as well have patted me on the head and told me to go back to the kitchen to make it a sandwich.
Using only five words, I’d heard the billboard give me “Don’t worry your pretty little heads off, ladies. Don’t go into hysterics.”
I began screaming uncontrollably. No words, just the type of barbarous, guttural howl of unintelligible fury that can only be satisfied by murder or good bourbon. A sedan passed me on the left and I bared my teeth like a rampaging silverback. I punched the dashboard, I stomped the gas pedal. I wanted a chainsaw. I wanted an axe. It had to come down. The flowery script and infantilizing pastel puce had swum into view for only a moment, and then were gone and replaced by a vision of divine violence.
Suddenly, I was Tamoe Gozen, the famous woman samurai, astride a black horse frothing and bucking in wild terror during the Battle of Awazu. I was swinging the unrelenting edge of my blade down to collect the head of my enemy. Raising my drooling trophy into the air, I was splitting my lungs with blood and thunder.
When I regained consciousness a week and a half later, I found out that the billboards, slated to run through July and August, are only part of a three-pronged marketing campaign that also includes television spots, and print ads that run in publications like Underwired, the Courier-Journal, Louisville Magazine and others. In print ads, the line is slightly different: “Women are good at it. Comforting.” and “Women are good at it. Listening.”
Rebecca Brown, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for Baptist Hospital East, worked with Charlotte Reed, an Account Director for Red7e advertising agency, an affiliate of the U of L College of Business, to create the campaign.
I called Brown to get her side of things. “With this campaign we knew it was going to be about Women’s Services, and we determined during a series of meetings:
What is it we need to highlight about women’s health? “In any ad campaign you really have to focus your message so that it has the most impact possible,” Brown said. “The actual adjectives that are on the billboard are these traits that our caregivers have, and they are shared by some women. Not all women, but some, and certainly a majority of our patients want that kind of care.”
There’s nothing new about exploiting the stereotype of “woman as nurturer” in order to sell a product, particularly when that product is being sold to the vulnerable and wary.
Reed, who was also on the call, described how vulnerable their patients are, and said “When we say we know that patients are scared or concerned and they look for this, we know this based on research. So having a warm and caring staff is something important to a patient.” Suddenly, I was Deborah Sampson; fighting under General George Washington in the Continental Army for the third year, I’d just cut a musket ball out of my own thigh.
Red7e has also worked to create advertisements for the Kentucky government’s “Education Pays” campaign, and the Girl Scouts of America, pairing images of empowered women with statements like “Use [education] to shatter the glass ceiling.” And “Girls who climb mountains are 60% less likely to be called ‘sweetie’.”
Comparing the above campaign messages with those present in the Baptist East campaign makes the Red7e’s business ethics seem mercenary at worst, schizophrenic at best.
I asked Dan Barbercheck, the Executive Creative Director of Red7e who worked with both Brown and Reed on the campaign, what ethical responsibilities advertisers have to the public, being the only entities that can afford to exercise their free speech on a large scale.
“I think that there is a responsibility to not lie, and there is a responsibility to not be counter to the interests of the society and culture,” Barbercheck said, “That said, it is free speech.”
Barbacheck raises an interesting question here. How invested should we be in protecting the speech of corporate advertisers whose actions further marginalize already-marginalized groups?
Robert McChesney, in “The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas”, posits that when “those with the capacity to engage in free press are in a position to determine who can speak to the great mass of citizens and who cannot.”
“Some people feel like it’s an oversimplification of a complex human being,” said Reed.
Brown added that “in healthcare, women have felt like their voices are not heard. And we feel that it’s very important for women to know that when they come to Baptist Hospital East, they are heard,”
What have women’s voices been saying so far? “We’ve had people who’ve said they love the campaign, and we’ve had people who’ve said they didn’t like the campaign. The billboards are the ones that are mentioned the most,” said Brown. “The main concern is that it might stereotype women.”
When I asked how a hospital could be trusted to listen to women’s concerns about something as important as healthcare, when women’s voices don’t seem to be heard about an ad campaign, Reed’s response skirted the question by saying that “this campaign does not say that women only are these things.”
Suddenly, I was Lyudmila Pavlichenko. My voice was unheard behind the lens of my Soviet-issued SVT-40 sniper rifle, shooting my 309th Nazi, the 36th enemy sniper.
What consequences could companies face that exercise their free speech irresponsibly?
Barbercheck says “The real consequence is that you can totally alienate the people that you are trying to appeal to. That is the ultimate consequence.”
At last, I was Sally Ride, and my body was ascending out of orbit at nearly 17,000 mph strapped to a metal canister filled with rocket fuel. I was leaving the planet. I was breaking free from the last bond, and emerging into the breathe-taking dark. I was weightless, suspended, wholly alien.
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Photo: Rea Hodge/The Louisville Cardinal
