Dear Marshfield Clinic:

Your recent ad campaign for the “Cosmetic Surgery” center is disturbing and offensive to the undersigned members of the central Wisconsin community. We are writing because we believe it important to convey to the leaders at the Marshfield Clinic why your profiteering from women’s insecurities and promotion of ageism, “looksism,” and sexism troubles the members of our community and should be discontinued immediately.

Both your print, television, and direct mail brochure versions of this advertisement are equally problematic. The sexism in these ads should be immediately apparent. Obviously, since all of the actors/models in the ad are women, the Marshfield Clinic’s suggestion that women rather than men should pay special attention to their appearances to the point of using surgical intervention to combat the natural progress of age reflects a patriarchal and perhaps even misogynist attitude on the part of your clinic. Besides targeting women’s typical physical areas of concern (lower body), we were quite disgusted to see your advertisement invent new areas of women’s bodies for them to hate, including “eye fat.” We are quite sure the Marshfield Clinic does not wish to represent itself as oppressive to women; however, this ad campaign conveys such a message.

Second, the ageism of your ad is also upsetting. One model declares, “My eyelids are so droopy. I look so old….,” suggesting that age (especially for women), rather than being the source of wisdom, experience, and sagacity, should be combated through surgical procedures and should be a source of shame and self-flagellation. This promotes an ageist agenda which suggests aging is unattractive and to be avoided. Requiring women to attend to their physical appearance ad infinitum sends them on a meaningless and unwinnable battle that only supports a vain, youth culture and devalues the important gains women make intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically as they age. That your ad targets aging as negative reveals the Marshfield Clinic’s disrespect for the powerful aspects of aging for women. Encouraging women to maintain a youthful and sexually appealing appearance into their 50s (as your ad’s model appears) simply promotes a shallow and two-dimensional understanding of women.

Third, your special attention to women’s childbearing function and preying upon fears about pregnancy and its effects on their bodies requires special comment. As one of your ad’s women declares, “I’ve had three kids. I would love a tummy tuck.” That one of the most natural functions of women’s bodies becomes the source of shame and disgust for women in your ad campaign reveals a deep lack of appreciation for the creative and spiritual aspects of this important accomplishment for many women and asks them to translate what is often an empowering experience into nothing more than another repulsive physical imperfection.

Finally, and most obviously the “looksism,” as feminist scholars define it, in the advertisements is as loathsome as it is common. Of course undergirding the ad’s message is, with the question “What would you change?” the suggestion that all women should be chronically dissatisfied with their bodies and use surgical intervention to correct “blemishes” and imperfections. This parlaying of women’s insecurities fed by media-disseminated images of female bodily perfection into 1) a medical problem and 2) profits by the Marshfield Clinic is especially contemptible.

We, the undersigned, request that you halt this grossly disrespectful, disturbing, and offensive ad campaign immediately.

Signed,

Holly Hassel, Wausau, WI (other signatures collected)

The Offending Advertisement: