On that point: A body shouldn’t be used as ad space

A disturbing trend has become more prominent in recent years, and now what was once a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon is hitting the American public. Enterprising companies, ones that see the decreasing print ad space yet the infinite availability of the Internet and other resources as not enough to meet their advertising needs, have taken their slogans to a new canvas: the human body. 

Companies, such as Air New Zealand, according to a New York Times article, are paying people cash or airline tickets to shave their head and display the company’s Web site on their newly shaved head in temporary tattoo form. A sad and unsurprising step for these companies, yes.

But what is even more predictable is that people are willing to basically sell a piece of their body to an unknown online retailer for a month to turn a slight profit, while simultaneously devaluing their own body and humanity as a whole.

Portlanders pride themselves on their tattoos. Whether it’s a hipster series of birds across the arm, or glorifying a fallen friend in Old English initials, we exalt our tattoos as part of what makes us individuals. However, individuality doesn’t come with a price. Sure, people could pay $100 for a lame Mickey Mouse tattoo that they may now regret, but the memories and ownership of it is completely theirs.

The same arguments that are used to defend the illegality of profiting from the trade of human organs apply to the use of your body as a billboard for advertising. It creates victims, and mostly victims of economic disadvantage, which are swayed by the seemingly easy work it would take to slap a temporary tattoo across a pregnant belly and subsequently let inquiries and cash flow.

Without regard to personal autonomy, most people who would do such a thing as slap a Web site on their body, temporary or not, proves they are in such economic strife that they are basically selling off parts of their body to the highest bidder. This is the ultimate shame here.

Yes, unlike organ trade, one gets to keep that arm that displayed the Starbucks logo after they are done being a vehicle for consumer dissemination, but they are quantifying how much parts of themselves are worth.

I would like to think that humans are more than the sum of their parts, but apparently these days I am in the minority, because thousands of people are biting at the chance to use their bodies for a corporation’s profit.

The advertising itself can take many forms. Air New Zealand chose the stark example of having its human billboards shave their heads. According to the aforementioned New York Times article, “A similar marketing campaign in England in January for www.feelunique.com, an online beauty products store, paid 10 men and women to apply temporary tattoos with the company’s Web address on their eyelids and then wink at strangers.

Chosen randomly from more than 6,000 who applied online, participants were paid 100 pounds (about $149) to wink at people 1,000 times, or 10 pence a wink, an allusion to pay-per-view Web advertising.” It is a scary world when even interactions between humans cannot be devoid of advertisements.

Ultimately, we should value our bodies the same as we value our intelligence or our souls, which is to say, that they are invaluable. Putting a price on the human body allows for exploitation by hungry advertisers looking to make a quick, unorthodox buck.

Billboards or not, we ought to think of ourselves as more than what we are monetarily worth.