Biore: Go Steam Yourself

"Deep down dirt won't budge? GET STEAMED."

I have never experienced deep down dirt that wouldn’t budge. The only thing that comes close is the time during freshman orientation week when I wrote on my hand the room number for my Italian placement exam. Then I went to the 80s party and woke up in the morning with “FISK 302” backwards on my face.

That fun aside, dirt usually comes off our faces. However, Biore has come up with a way to sell something by pretending this isn’t true. They’ve invented a problem. Dirt on your face is not a grass stain on your jeans. It’s more like a blood stain on Lady MacBeth’s hand—all in your mind. This ad has convinced you the problem is real by using a cunning tactic—incitement.

Incitement is how a culture gets you to read yourself. Someone—Ben Franklin, a teacher, an ad—tells you who you are. You see yourself that way, and respond with this new understanding of yourself. Except they made up that first idea in the first place just to get you to respond like that! By making certain things seem natural—just a part of who you are—the desired response is then also seen as natural. Buying the product is just an extension of who you are. You’re not going out of your way or doing anything weird, you’re just acting like your normal self.

Not much of this ad makes sense. 55% cleaner? How do you even measure clean? I had always of “clean” as something that either was or wasn’t—like “unique” or “fired.” And cleaner than what? According to their site, cleaner than without steam—but that means they’re comparing steam versus no steam, not Biore versus some other brand. This is getting weird.

The ad says the cleanser works with SteamActiv beads.  What the Front Door is a SteamaActiv bead?  Taking an E off the end to make it look all fancy and Scandinavian doesn’t make it real.  Yes, I would look cool and smart if my name were Sophi and I had spent my lif tim in th stat of Delawar, with never a struggl, but it’s just not how things ar(e).

After looking at this ad for a while, I did start to wonder if maybe my skin isn’t as clean as I thought. We tend to believe what people tell us we are. If you tell students they’re stupid, they’ll do worse on tests. If your boyfriend tells you you’d look better in gold jewelry, not silver, you start thinking about how much you’ve always hated that silver necklace your grandpa bought you, and how silver makes you look fat. Wait, what?

In 1968, elementary school teacher Jane Elliott spent a day telling her students that blue eyed kids were better and naturally smarter than brown eyed. She gave them special privileges that she withheld from the brown eyed kids. By the end of the day, the brown eyed kids had become subservient, and they preformed worse in class.  While we all know babies are dumb and have easily malleable brains, but the point remains—people internalize what you tell them they are.

A report released just last week showed that when a group was given a math test and told that men usually did better on it than women, the men did in fact score much higher than women—the average male score was 25. The average female score was five. Another group was given the same exam, but they were not told there was any performance difference between men and women. In this case, men averaged 19, and women averaged 17.

In his essay “The Way To Wealth,” Ben Franklin spends ten straight pages telling Americans they’re not working hard enough. By the end of it, I always feel anxious and that I need to be doing more, even if I hate it, because, come on there will be sleeping enough in the grave!  So maybe I should be out there working overtime instead of lazing away the day reading Ben Franklin essays! Or maybe reading these will make me smarter, and I’ll work better, so I should stay here? I just don’t know! And now I’m upset!!!

By inventing this anxiety that we aren’t doing enough, Ben Franklin invented the American worker. Today, Americans get on average 10 paid vacation days a year—almost half of most industrialized nations—and yet somehow find time to watch The Blind Side, which makes me want to punch someone.

Elliot told her students You’re not good enough, and they felt inferior. Franklin told American workers You’re not working hard enough, and we felt lazy. Now, Biore has told us we aren’t clean enough, and people are buying. Just how many people?  Well, according to their site, “Biore is now used by many people around the world.” With that kind of statistical analysis, it’s got to be good.