Adfreak pointed us to this homecare ad for the Dutch Socialist Party. In it, an 86-year-old woman undresses for the camera eye to demonstrate displeasure with the government’s new policy of rotating personal helpers amongst the elderly.
Rotating assistance is less expensive than dedicated aid, but the geriatric undresser makes her point thus: “A stranger is helping me wash myself now. Next time it’ll be another stranger. What is the difference [between this and] getting undressed for the whole country?”
The question of the hour is, does nudity help or detract from the message?
We’d emphatically say it helps. Watching an old woman undress in our YouTube window generates sympathetic feelings of shame and humiliation. We can hardly undress in front of our siblings, let alone apathetic strangers.
The next natural question is, what do viewers do with these feelings? Are there ways to help set forth an economically sustainable but less dehumanizing policy? No use disseminating controversial messages — and riling up touchy emotions — without a satisfying call to action.
