{"id":386,"date":"2025-06-02T02:03:38","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T02:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=386"},"modified":"2025-06-02T02:03:38","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T02:03:38","slug":"hyper-able-bodiedness-in-a-dentist-commercial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=386","title":{"rendered":"Hyper Able-Bodiedness in a Dentist Commercial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ideal Dental commercial: The Juggler | Now that&#039;s ideal. (2022)\" width=\"580\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/I5T76J1wiMc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We so commonly speak of media as representing ideals, whether that be in some covert unspoken way or in a flashy provocative spell. Throughout the course we have been training a kind of oppositional, or at the very least, critical gaze to the media we consume. However, as McRuer makes note, this awareness raising has not really touched the discourse of compulsory able-bodiedness. It is often taken as the natural state of things, which encourages a passive reception. It is harder though to accept the reality shown when it is so out-of-this-world. That is to say, rarely is compulsory able-bodiedness so blatant and extreme as it is in the following dental commercial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Title <em>The Juggler<\/em>, this 30 second dental advertisement sits squarely in a neoliberal America. The title\u2019s namesake is seen with four arms attached and more off the frame doing many necessary tasks. She\u2019s feeding a baby, cooking an American breakfast (eggs and bacon), folding laundry, doing paperwork, typing furiously on her mac-keyboard, and as the narrator tells us booking a dentist appointment. And throughout it all, she never expresses the slightest bit of discontent. In fact, the seems happy to do all these (mostly domestic) tasks \u2013 none of which seem to be done for her own sake. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"623\" height=\"405\" src=\"blob:https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/fe7dd77c-5180-4592-8ad1-472dbf928ed7\" alt=\"A person holding a pan with eggs and a person holding a computer\n\nAI-generated content may be incorrect.\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"936\" height=\"397\" src=\"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-5.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-388\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-5.png 936w, https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-5-300x127.png 300w, https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-5-768x326.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 936px) 100vw, 936px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The main sell the advertisement is attempting to make is that <em>Ideal Dental<\/em> allows busy patients like Teal-shirt below to schedule their appointments on Saturdays. That\u2019s it. No special mention of the quality of dentistry nor the kinds of services offered. Those parts are already coded in in the architype of the patient they present. Our unproblematic patient is (hyper)able-bodied, ostensibly middle\/upper-class, and already dentally hygienic. That she\u2019s white, young, a mother, and employed cannot go unmentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"936\" height=\"433\" src=\"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-4.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-389\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-4.png 936w, https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-4-300x139.png 300w, https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-4-768x355.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 936px) 100vw, 936px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have spent a lot of time deconstructing, critiquing, and on occasion obliterating ideals. Confronting hegemonic ideologies such as heteronormativity and homonationalism are all about emptying out the signs of the \u201cideal.\u201d Doing that meta ideologic work, the kind Sandoval includes as a methodology of the oppressed, means asking first what is ideal \u2013 so interrogating the image above \u2013 and then putting it into relation with other (equally arbitrary) ideals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being able to schedule dentist appointments on Saturdays is ideal only in the context where scheduling it on weekdays compromises one\u2019s productivity. The connection between healthcare and work is, to the detriment of the unemployed and low-wage workers, the manufactured reality of America. The implicit ideological message then is that a good American would take advantage of the Saturday slots. And not only that, but we should also be grateful for that flexibility as it leaves us with more room to do other kinds of work. That Sunday is still not an option is curious as well. It looks like <em>ideal dental <\/em>observes the Christian Sabbath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"623\" height=\"266\" src=\"blob:https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/9c374515-4cc7-47a9-b3ef-fe84e09eeb0f\" alt=\"A screenshot of a website\n\nAI-generated content may be incorrect.\">Framing dental health as a secondary necessity to work is also part of the ads messaging. Taking a look at their website, it is also clear that dental healthcare is seen not as healthcare in the traditional sense (that is caring about one\u2019s wellbeing) but instead it is a professional service meant to ensure patient satisfaction. Convenience, comfort, and modernity are all stressed in both the ad and website. The chatbot prompt is friendly in a servile kind of way. The end goal is to have the patient smile, which while certainly a goal for dentistry, does away with all the other reasons someone might be going to a dentist unrelated to cosmetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"936\" height=\"423\" src=\"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-3.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-387\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-3.png 936w, https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-3-300x136.png 300w, https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-3-768x347.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 936px) 100vw, 936px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The appearance of a third arm comes out again in the final seconds of the ad. It is, in this case wholly unnecessary to have more limbs as the actress is no longer multi-tasking. Yet it reappears just to take her phone out of her pocket and then lingers for no apparent reason. A hyper compulsory able-bodiedness is unabating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We so commonly speak of media as representing ideals, whether that be in some covert unspoken way or in a flashy provocative spell. Throughout the course we have been training a kind of oppositional, or at the very least, critical gaze to the media we consume. However, as McRuer makes note, this awareness raising [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}