Artranese has Lupus

Friday, 01 October 2010 00:23

I was perusing the Guinness World Records website when I came across this ad

Seems normal enough... In fact, the ad is perfectly legitimate. It links to the .gov site http://www.couldihavelupus.gov/ which is a US government Lupus awareness initiative.

Lupus, from what I glean by glancing at Wikipedia, is a disease which affects women nine times more often than men (that is not a particularly clear way of expressing and comparing the infection rates), and the website that the ad links to is obviously targeted to women.

So why is the face on this ad a transvestite or transexual named "Artranese" (get it? Are Trannies. haha). Lupus is presumably not more common in trannies than in men. So how did this happen?

In any case, mistakes (or sabotages) of this sort amuse me ^_^. And if you think *you* might have lupus, tranny or not, go check out that website for more information.

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Comments

0 # julia 2011-05-30 02:52

whoa transphobia what? It's not really obvious to me how you decided this person is trans, and even if so, why are portrayals of trans people in advertising a bad thing? I'd be really impressed if I saw ads targeted at women with transwomen in them.

I think we need more media representations of trans people (not 'trannies', kthx) which aren't about them being trans.

(and the ad at http://www.couldihavelupus.gov/our-campaigns.cfm suggests lupus does things to your appearance: maybe that has something to do with it.)

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0 # julia 2011-05-30 02:54

I forgot to say that the website has videos of Artranese, so they are certainly talking about an actual woman, not just a stock photo and made-up name.

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0 # Alejandro 2011-05-30 10:04

I appreciate your comment, and I've been thinking about it. You make a good point about trans peoples' portrayal in the media, and I am also in favour of advertising usually meant for women to reach out to (hold on while I check my terminology) transwomen, or anybody who identifies with the female gender. But there is no "identifying" with susceptibility to lupus, so why were the resources used to be inclusive?

I'm sorry that I may have written the post in an offensive way. When I reread it, it looks like I assumed the ad was the butt end of someone's joke, and that is an inappropriate way to talk about it. Thanks for raising my awareness.

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0 # Alejandro 2011-05-30 10:05

The features of the person in the picture are very sharp, with a large nose and high cheek bones. Her hair cut is overly "avant garde", being asymmetrical (you can see in the vid that it's not just tucked), and making an extra effort to expose a large hoop earring. This isn't the style of any other pictures I find on their website. In addition, it takes considerable effort and/or straightening to make a black person's hair look like that. Perhaps it is a wig. Finally, the name, Artranese, really gives it away. Whatever the source of the ad, and whatever the sex of the subject, it was intended to catch they eye, at the very least, of people who are trans, or trans "aware".

In my mind, Artranese is very likely a transwoman (likely enough to remark on her being used to advertise to people who are female bodied). Incidentally \WikiPhi(transw oman) = 28, where \WikiPhi is the number of clicks it takes to get to Philosophy, as per the xkcd comic.

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