new thread
A friend sent me the above ad, I do not know the magazine he found it in, but the company is www.fusionone.com (I trimmed part of the ad off so the relevant parts of it would be large enough to see on your screen, and their name was over in the corner and got cut off when I did).
Unlike the "makeovers" we've found so offensive, at least this longhair is not actually being subjected to a haircut, but the same implication, that longhairs "need" haircuts, is implied. If they did not want to disparage longhairs, they could have used a shorthaired model instead. Such men get haircuts far more than we do and use of one of them would be a far more logical choice, unless their intent was to offend our community.
I don't criticize the model, he got his bucks, he got in the magazine, and he is surely a happy longhair. As we've said with the makeover fiascoes, people will do anything to get in the media, and big companies take advantage of the little guy. The advertising agency and the company PR people who approved the ad are to blame - they are in an industry where a competent worker would have been exposed to diversity issues and certainly would know better.
The offense, of course, is that our community is often disparaged over our hair, and we have suffered violence and employment discrimination as a result, and that this message feeds that hate.
Maybe this is part of a series. Maybe the next one will be a guy wearing a yarmulke and the caption, "Nose job, Friday 3pm".
It's an advertisement. I'm sure the creators knew exactly what they were doing. Clearly they're not worried about offending guys like you.
What offends a guy like *me* is that you'd equate something as superficial as long hair with something as inherent and fundamental as one's ethnic heritage.
Maybe you're the one who needs diversity training.
I agree, It is an ad. Take it for what it's worth. (not much)
That's an oxymoron. Quit spouting off junk just for (whatever) effect if you don't know what it means.
This is from yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle turns out they used the picture without the guys permission
San Francisco -- It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and Skip Johnson wasn't about to cut his hair.
But that was close to 30 years ago, and the production manager who once toured with Jefferson Airplane and the Eagles has changed with the times, now sporting a shorter, more conservative cut.
So when a 1970s photo of Johnson cropped up in ads for a San Francisco dot- com, with his head filling a two-page spread that poked fun at the bushy mane, it sent him on a trip -- straight to San Francisco Superior Court.
Earlier this month, Johnson sued FusionOne and the advertising firm Black Rocket, contending that the use of the photo was an invasion of his privacy.
"Back in those days, that was the way you looked if you were a production manager with a rock 'n' roll band," said Glendon Miskel, Johnson's attorney.
And these days, the lawsuit makes clear, Johnson's "hairstyle and length are more appropriate to today's fashions and (Johnson's) age and role as a production executive."
The old photo started showing up last June, when FusionOne rolled out a major ad campaign in Newsweek and People, among other mainstream magazines.
Johnson's hairstyle in the ad is distinctly 1970s -- with a pile of unruly brown locks that could be equaled in this decade only by Tina Turner after a long ride in a convertible, or maybe Fabio in an electrical storm.
The ad is accompanied with the words "Haircut: Friday 3 p.m."
FusionOne develops "synchronization services" that allow high-tech toys to talk to each other. The ad suggests that a cell phone, Palm Pilot, laptop, pager and PC could all pass along a message about the haircut appointment.
Miskel said his client had been married for more than 10 years to Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick, who gave her ex-husband the bad news about the ad.
"It was actually Grace who first noticed the photograph," Miskel said. "She said, 'Oh my God, this is Skip.' "
Johnson, 48, who now lives near Philadelphia, estimates that the photo was taken in 1973 or 1974, although he's not sure where. Johnson said he had gotten calls from several friends last summer before picking up a Sports Illustrated with the ad.
"It was the surprise of my life," he said.
Since then, Johnson said, he has received frequent calls as the Frisbee- size picture of his unshorn head shows up in new places -- most recently in an airline's in-flight magazines.
A FusionOne spokesman declined to comment. Black Rocket founding partner John Yost said, "This is a misunderstanding, and we expect to resolve it very quickly."
Also sued was online photo provider Corbis Corp., which last week displayed more than two dozen shots of Johnson, including the subject of the controversy,
on its Web site.
A spokesman for Corbis, based in Washington, said the company does not comment on pending litigation. The Web site says the picture was taken by a photojournalist during a boating trip with Slick on San Francisco Bay.
Johnson isn't the only one to sue for a bad hair day that ended up on a piece of mass marketing.
Last year a suburban mother of two from Oregon sued a Southern California record label after a photo from a 1987 formal dance showed up on the punk rock compilation "Before You Were Punk 2."
In that photo Lesli Brown sported the hair-draped-over-one-eye style made famous by the lead singer of A Flock of Seagulls -- looking like one side of her hairdo was hacked off by a weed whacker, and the other side was treated with Miracle-Gro.
Brown settled the lawsuit in November for an undisclosed sum. In that case, Brown's ex-boyfriend provided the photo to Vagrant Records, thinking she wouldn't object.
Neither lawsuit was anything near a first of its kind. The invasion of privacy laws that they cited in their complaints date back to 1902, when New Yorker Abigail M. Roberson sued over a lithograph of her face that appeared on 25,000 advertisements for flour without her knowledge.
Johnson's lawsuit was filed May 15. The complaint also includes claims for alleged libel, misappropriation of likeness and infliction of emotional distress.
Johnson wants unspecified damages, along with a court order that would force the company to stop using the photo in advertisements.
According to the suit, Johnson started working with bands in the early 1970s, touring as a production manager for the Who. He later worked as a lighting director for artists including Neil Young and Elton John, and as a tour manager for Prince.
Recently, much of his work has been family-oriented.
He managed a world tour of the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" stage show from 1994 to 1996, and in 1998 was the project director for a dinosaur exhibit at the Philadelphia Civic Center.
Johnson says his field has become more competitive over time, and he now wears a tie to work -- a decision that would have been less than groovy when the photo was shot.
"I probably had one in the closet, left over from a funeral or a wedding or something," Johnson recollected. "I would have been laughed at (in the 1970s) if I wore it to work."
E-mail Peter Hartlaub at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com.
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 13
Well, it looks like the company in question has gotten their just desserts - a lawsuit to defend themselves against. Ha Ha!
Yeah, they said the guy needed a haircut FIVE TIMES. They were beating us over the head with it.
We all have different identities. Like quite a few who come 'round here, my primary identity is as a longhair. Yours is ethnic. You have a right to your identity and we have a right to ours. Drawing the parallel was done precisely to catch the eye of persons such as yourself to point that out.
No more than you do. :-) That's my point.
Then turn the page, Bill. Change the channel. Caveat emptor.
Fair enough. Perhaps you could direct me to more information on Nazi Germany's campaign to eradicate Europe's long-assimilated longhair population. Or the Communist Chinese attempt to prevent Tibetans from wearing long hair. Or the Serbian attempts to drive the longhairs from Kosovo, where they'd lived for the past 1000 years. Or how in Rwanda the Tutsis (or was it the Hutus?) massaced hundreds of thousands of ethnic longhairs. Yes, the millenia of longhair persecution is a black mark on humanity.
If all you have to worry about is your hair, Bill, then I hope you count your blessings every single day.
In fact, Bill does have some information about the haircutting done by the Nazis.
Lemme see... how about the systematic persecution of Native Americans by European conquerors? Many native tribes, including my ancestral one, were noted for growing very long hair. Said native peoples were subjected to genocide, lynchings, exile from their land, and forced assimilation- including, yes, forced shearing of their hair, which held religious significance for many. Then there are the American 60s, where young longhaired men were significantly discriminated against and sometimes subjected to physical violence- and some of the prejudice still is around. I'll grant, this is not the *millenia* that you speak of, but I don't consider recent discrimination to be less important than older examples.
Longhairs are not even allowed into Afghanistan, and until a few years ago, Singapore and Malawi.
As longhairs we may not serve our country in our armed forces in many lands, and other employment discrimination is rampant. Many longhairs have great difficulty finding work.
Longhairs in their teens today are often beaten and mutilated by family members, and about this authorities do nothing. American Indian youth in the United States a hundred years ago were forcefully taken from their homes to "boarding schools" and their hair shorn.
Abuse of longhairs in prisons is an ongoing problem. I spoke with a man earlier this week who was questioned on the street in Phoenix last month and the cop said up front it was because he had long hair. He had an outstanding warrant that had been taken care of long ago but was not wiped out of the computer. It took him nine days to get it straightened out, and during that whole time he was locked in solitary confinement because he would not let the deputies cut off his hair.
Longhairs in the California prison system are facing similar treatment, including Sikhs and American Indians who for religious reasons have never in their lives cut their hair.
their job (ad agency) is to advertise to as wide an audience as possible. since the 'norm' in society is that the man pictured indeed does need a haircut they can and will reflect that. i was amused more than offended by the ad... here is a guy presumably in dire need of a haircut & forgetful enough that he has left this message on a number of electronic devices.
i've come to a point where i try very hard not to be offended by things. anger takes up an incredible amount of mental energy that's better spent on more worthwhile pursuits.
I think part of the purpose of the ad was to draw attention to it by citing the "get a haircut" controversy.
It's NOT the norm for people with long hair to frequently get a haircut. The norm is when a person with short hair starts reminding himself to get a haircut--short hair requires haircuts more frequently than long hair. When hair gets long, the requests to get a haircut become LESS frequent because people know that people with long hair don't cut their hair often.
The ad may defeat it's other purpose of promoting a product or service. Since computers and software are so unreliable (alleged), I guess he has to put his reminders on a large number of expensive electronic gizmos because so many of them fail so often. It makes technology seem like such a waste of time and money.
That's why I hardly ever watch TV and tend to avoid commerical advertiser supported entertainment. I don't know why other people still watch/read the stuff and call in "news" or somehow think they are being "informed".
Indeed, longhairs do not get "haircuts". We get "trims", or we speak of "trimming our ends". English words can carry nuances, and the word "haircut" is heavily laden with the vision of a short-hair result. For that reason, the word "haircut" has become the most common slur used against our community. In the ad in question, they wrote the slur right on top of the longhair's mane. I found that very offensive. Then they went on and repeated the slur four more times. When slurs are reiterated, they become taunts. If their aim was to find a phrase to repeat five times to make a point about their product reiterating information, and they wished to make a respectable impression, selecting a slur was a very poor choice.
The commercial media is full of ads and content that promote bullying and hate and violence. It's because too few people do anything about it. A way to respond to the ad is to cancel the magazine subscription or write a complaint letter to the magazine and site a number of examples from the magazine.
The magazine ad appears to be the typical case where the offensive advertiser hides negative messages behind a positive interpretation. When the advertiser is confronted, the advertiser probably says the ad shows the person willfully decided to get a haircut and used a mobile phone to schedule an appointment, indicated by the line going from his head to the mobile phone. After calling to schedule an appointment he used the data synchronization service to conveniently send the appointment reminders to all his information appliances, indicated by the lines to all his other information appliances.
Another interpretation shows that the messages are unsolicited messages sent from advertisers to all his information appliances telling him to get a hair**t. I checked the web site www.fusionone.com/aboutus/advertise.htm and find they offer direct advertising--comparable to telemarketing and junk mail. If Fusionone starts using direct advertising to harass longhairs, then there may be enough proof to get a boycott organized or sue or press criminal charges for stalking or defamation.
Is this meant to be a layered or shag haircut in the ad? Because, frankly, I like the poofy, triangle look myself. I remember seeing a message somewhere that someone wanted a layered haircut to avoid the poofy look, because it made the head look like a triangle.
I think this statement says a LOT more about your own feelings about Jews than the ad says about the advertisers feelings about long hair on men. LIGHTEN UP! (And I don't mean your haircolor, baby.)
Hardly, dude. A Jewish friend sent me the ad. I spent the entire Memorial Day weekend with another Jewish friend. You don't know me, so as for my feelings, you don't know at all what you're talking about.
The point is, some people such as yourself do not realize when they've seen slurs against longhairs because all their lives such slurs have never been pointed out. Some of us now choose to call people on such slurs rather than cowering when they are presented. To do that, we have to be aware that slurring is what is going on. When I was a kid, black people sat by and took the "n-word". They no longer do, and the reason is the community opened up dialog on the matter and said, "This is offensive and it's going to stop." We are opening up dialog on the slurring of longhairs here.
Some slurs against social groups are words with a negative connotation. Some parrot stereotypes. And some point out body characteristics, such as the shape of the eyes, the size of the nose, or the length of the hair. What all slurs have in common is they are intended to communicate to the recipient that he, and members of his social group, are not wanted. In the latter category of "body characteristics", references to "haircuts" are the slurs that say longhairs are not wanted.
This does not mean we do not get the first two types, because we do. Comments such as "you look like a girl" (when it is obvious you don't), "dirty hippie", "drug dealer", etc., are thrown our way. If you dig around this board enough, you can make yourself quite a list. That is not necessary. Once you have recognized a sampling of the slurs, you soon get to a point where they are all very evident.
When a slur is thrown your way, you can either cower and say nothing, or you can call them on it and say it's offensive. To do the latter, we have to recognize slurs when we see them. One way to do that is through analogies, to point out parallels with which the reader is already familiar. I was doing that, nothing more.
I'll also add that tone of voice and context in an encounter are important. Sometimes people call me a hippie and are smiling! The meaning is very different than when that word is accompanied with obscentities.
Celebrate it long!
Bill