After viciously manipulating a faceless stock image to the "shock" of the actor who was paid $500 for the use of his likeness, City Room reports that the Health Department is at it again: they paid an overweight woman $300 for the use of her image, and even had the nerve to tell her that it was going to be used in a city-sponsored ad campaign. "This is so negative," actress and singer Beth Anne Sacks says. "The 300 has come and gone, and now I'm all over the subway system."
We're not in the business of defending The Man telling us what to eat, drink, smoke, or marry. But the indignation these two models have towards the Health Department is patently insane. Sacks responded to a Craigslist posting from an ad agency requesting an "overweight woman and was photographed walking up the stairs of a downtown subway stop. Did she think she was appearing in a David Lynch coffee commercial?
At the risk of sounding like a corporate tool: caveat emptor! If these models didn't want their image to be used or manipulated, then they probably shouldn't have signed legally binding documents that allowed the people handing them money to do so.
Sure, $300 isn't a lot compared to what people who advertise for say, Coca-Cola get paid. But the idea that Sacks was "used" injects sanctimony into the world of advertising that no adult who has ever watched TV—or ridden the subway for that matter—could accept with a straight face. We're awaiting for the posthumous memoirs of the "Time to Make the Donuts" guy, tentatively titled, "I Had No Idea I Was Making The Donuts."
