The plastic surgery ‘become prettier’ app that allows women to escape life with ‘an ordinary man’
It’s amazing what social media allows you to bond over these days: cats, cakes and there’s apparently an app out there for people who like drinking. Dr Mumbo can definitely appreciate why that one may be a winner.
However, one Dr M is struggling to get his head round is GengMei, a social networking app that connects up people with an interest in plastic surgery. Being the squeamish sort, Dr Mumbo doesn’t exactly want to imagine the nature of these bonding sessions, but the name GengMei – meaning ‘becoming prettier’ – gives it away somewhat.
Hence it was unsurprising when this print ad for the messaging app floated in his LinkedIn feed.
The copy on the ad literally translates as: “Ordinary man, ordinary income, ordinary life…. just like that, spending the rest of my life with him.”
Or as Jerry Clode, the head of social and insights at digital agency Resonance China, interprets it – a plain woman will spend her life with an average man. Ouch.
China isn’t a stranger to controversial plastic surgery ads. This one from 2015, which ran with the caption ‘The only thing you’ll ever have to worry about is how to tell the kids’ went viral across the internet – and allegedly ruined the career of the female model involved.
Being a handsome chap himself, Dr Mumbo hasn’t much time for these kinds of ads anyway. Social networking over cats and beer sounds like a lot more fun.
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