Yet another paper for my Semiotics course last semester. We had to analyze an advertisement from a semiological stance. I chose a Botox advertisement. I don’t have it anymore (my professor has it) and I couldn’t find an identical ad to scan in, but I found a copy online which is almost identical, save the first line or so. You can download it (in pdf form) here.

————-

“It takes 43 muscles to frown but only 17 to smile,” or so says the oft-repeated statistic. Though this aphorism is certainly not grounded in medical research, it deals with a concept around which much research has revolved: the role our faces play in conveying emotion. A week after birth, the average human infant is capable of imitating facial expressions; within six months the “social smile” emerges. Seeing only a ten-second clip of someone speaking, the average person can easily identify how the speaker is feeling. Furthermore, the arsenal of facial contortions to which each person is privy seems to be one of the few universal human characteristics — a smile means the same thing in essentially every culture. The muscles of the face are capable of incredibly fine contractions, and the precise synchronization of these contractions is what enables us to so accurately convey that which we have no exact words for: the nuances of human emotion.
(more…)