The Commercialism of Stress and Christmas

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:04:16 +0000

Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism offers a surprisingly funny and informative website about stress. Stress, Inc. : the commerce of coping is a lot of fun. There is a comprehensive history of stress with games and animations. There is an exploration of the commercialisation of stress by pharmaceutical companies, by the fitness industry, and by an astonishing array of other businesses. One particularly fine example details how advertising creates our neuroticism about aspects of life and then offers a solution to assuage those fears and stresses:

Calgon's now-legendary "Calgon...take me away" campaign tapped into anxiety --
stemming from situations such as having dirty dishes, which represented life's mundane stressors. In the television ad, dirty dishes, portrayed as a source of "social disapproval" among one's peers, created intolerable stress for one woman... bathing with Calgon bath gel provided a release from the anxiety. ...(T)he product provided a possible solution to the problem. "The product relieves the stress." That's the key to a successful fear appeal.

The Times is offering a Quiz: testing for festive stress. The quiz has the explanatory preamble:

Christmas has the potential to be one of the most stressful events in the calendar. According toa recent survey, the average preparation time is 13 full days. This involves 288 hours of shopping, four hours wrapping parcels, three hours decorating the house, nine hours cooking and 11 hours cleaning up the mess. And then there�s the sums of money you feel you have to spend. But whether you are time-rich and cash-poor or cash-rich and time-poor, there are ways of minimising the pain with good management.

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The Commercialism of Stress and Christmas