Ad Watch: Anatomically Incorrect

After a challenging year-end 2008, let’s start the New Year on a lighter note. I’ll postpone my usual Monday morning Trend Watch posting for later this week and share some observations about some truly … uh… unusual jewelry advertisements I spotted recently.

The whole point of advertising is to make your products memorable. A beautiful background is one manner of creating an eye-catching display. Of course, displaying beautiful jewelry on a beautiful woman in an ad is a time-honored tradition. Like it or not, airbrushing the models to enhance their physical perfection has become more and more common.

What strikes me as really odd, however, is the latest crop of ads for high-end jewelry lines that features women who seem to be lacking in certain particulars.

Here’s the first ad. Given the curve of the model’s bosom, it appears that she is meant to appear naked under that gorgeous elaborate collar… but .. is something missing?

This next ad is even more provocative. And even more airbrushed. I have to wonder … is the model intact in the original Italian ad? Was the ad censored for the American market?

And yet another odd ad. This model lost not only her nipples but virtually all semblance of a female bosom. And in this case, the airbrushing seems to be particularly pointless (sorry about the bad pun), as the necklace is short.

What gives with all these anatomically incorrect women?  They say that sex sells. I’m not so sure that sexless also sells. With apologies to Bob Hope for mangling his theme song, wouldn’t it be preferable to see jewelry on realistic women and to be able to say “thanks for the mammaries”?