I’ve decided to inaugurate a new occasional feature, “Let’s Talk Images,” in which I post an image seen somewhere in the world, make a few observations about why it struck me as a good candidate for analysis, and then open the floor to y’all as an opportunity to use your media literacy toolbox.
A few weeks ago, I started seeing this advertisement for health insurance on the public transit system here in Boston:
Image Caption [provided by Sara in comments:
The image depicts a Black woman wearing business-like attire against a city backdrop. Text above her head reads “When I have my health, I can do anything.” The text at the bottom reveals that it is an ad for Boston Medical Center’s HealthNet Plan, which is apparently part of Massachusetts’ affordable health insurance system.
On a superficial level, there’s obviously nothing wrong with an insurance company advertising their products, or the message that access to medical care is a positive thing for people. HealthNet is one of the health insurance programs here in Boston designed to cater to people who are eligible for state-subsidized healthcare or not insured through their workplace.
What caught my eye, however, was the equation in the text of health with the ability to “do anything.” Obviously illness and disability can be limiting in a lot of ways, but the flip-side of the poster’s argument is that without one’s “health” (defined how?), you can’t “do anything.” Which sidelines the many people who are living with chronic illness and disability yet engaged in an incredible amount of personally rewarding and socially productive activities.
The second message in this poster that bothered me is the argument being made when the text and image are read together: that a professional African-American woman who “has her health” faces no other impediments to personal success. This erasure of gender and race discrimination situates success in the private, rather than socio-political, sphere. If you have your health, the poster suggests, there are no excuses not to succeed. This poster depicts an individual whose ability to live the good life is constrained only by what happens inside her body, not the way embodied self is interpreted by others, interacted with on a daily basis, constrained by social institutions and political structures, or situation within an environment which may affect her physical and emotional well-being.
The floor’s all yours, Harpies: What strikes you about this image?
This seems to me to be a somewhat thoughtlessly phrased play on the old “if you have your health, you have everything” kind of truism. It’s puffery, not to be taken literally. My question about the poster is how effective it will be in reaching its target audience. I might have cut right to the chase and made it clear that this is a way to get health insurance if you don’t have it. To the extent that it looks like an ad for any commercial insurance plan, it will fail.
Since ads are by nature designed to sell things, they’re based on the premise that the consumer is lacking something that the advertiser can supply. That subtext is one that can wear away at us, leading us to think that we are fundamentally flawed in infinite ways. So to me the question is how do we use ads to get information that might be useful to us without absorbing the underlying message of inadequacy.
Here’s a caption:
The image depicts a Black woman wearing business-like attire against a city backdrop. Text above her head reads “When I have my health, I can do anything.” The text at the bottom reveals that it is an ad for Boston Medical Center’s HealthNet Plan, which is apparently part of Massachusetts’ affordable health insurance system.
Now here’s my 2 cents:
It’s phrased in the first person, which makes it sound like a motivational mantra this woman tells herself, rather than an assertion from outside that she has no other barriers, or that “health” is her only conceivable route to success. As such, it doesn’t strike me as particularly exemplary of ableism or of ignoring intersecting devalued identities.
@Sara Thanks for the caption! I’ve added it to the original post. And you’ve reminded me to make sure I include a verbal description moving forward. scribbles note to self
I think a more accurate slogan, which would speak directly to the message the poster’s trying to get across is: WHEN I DON’T HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE, I RISK LOSING MY HEALTH AND LIVELIHOOD.
Maybe they could use that instead? Or is that just restating the obvious?
isn’t there also a class element to this as well – personal success (socially defined) + liveliehood + health insurance = wellbeing and happiness.. those that don’t have health insurance well, you’re stuck..
as an aside, I’m glad for socialised medicine where I live.. and greatful for not having to see such advertising. At least in Australian the private health insurance companies, for the most part, don’t hide their class bias.
Being Canadian, my first impression was that this was a government poster celebrating the health care system – until, obviously, I read a little more closely and was creeped out thoroughly by the concept of health insurance as a product with customers to rope in via advertising. I found it interesting that my first reading changed the context of the tag line significantly for me, so I’ll try to explore that, if you all don’t mind.
Due to my own personal history, I don’t actually take umbrage to statements like ‘When I have my health, I can do anything.’ While this line is obviously an oversimplification and fairly propagandistic, there is a deeper truth to it – a commitment to public health enables the public. An ailing public will also suffer in terms of performance and the advancement of knowledge, science, technology, what have you. As far as potentially ableist implications go…if we refuse to acknowledge that various disabilities actually do, you know, hinder the people who have them, then we run the risk of encouraging a dispiriting super-crip mentality that shifts the blame for disabled people’s ‘shortcomings’ onto the individuals rather than the ailments themselves, or an unaccomodating society. As awesome and competent as many PWD are, there is no denying that their lives would be easier if they had the privilege of being able-bodied – which then should theoretically translate into an even greater capacity to achieve and find fulfillment.
As I stated previously, my impression of the ad changed dramatically once I realized that it had a product to sell, rather than simply an agenda to enforce. (Even that is kind of fucked up, but you’re getting the stream-of-consciousness version of my opinion on this rather than something fully formed; lucky you!
) What strikes me, now, is a sinister threat in the subtext, that your life will be hamstrung and unfulfilling if you do not purchase this product. Or, as BeckySharper put it, ‘WHEN I DON’T HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE, I RISK LOSING MY HEALTH AND LIVELIHOOD.’ Both the spoken and unspoken messages, then, work together in a way that strikes me as deeply cynical and manipulative.
So, in a nutshell – if I encountered this ad in Ontario, I would be significantly less creeped out by it than if I’d encountered it in Boston. Context is everything, and all that jazz.