LASIK ads

I've had a rather hard time finding LASIK ads from countries other than the U.S. Similarly, LASIK photos of people with brown eyes (or any color other than blue) are few and far between.

I did find an article in a Singapore-based zine called "asianone health" about government concerns with the marketing of the LASIK procedure. This article has a companion photo of a person apparently having an eye pressure test done in preparation for LASIK, and the person has brown eyes.



Of course, the fact that the article comes out of Indonesia is not necessarily the determining factor in why a person with brown eyes was chosen for this photo. As you can see, the photo has also been altered to include a scary black box with a caption demanding that people "see the truth about LASIK," with some of the type in a blurry typeface to visibly demonstrate possible complications or problems with the procedure. I also think it's interesting that the person chosen for the photo has almost no visible eyelashes, which is a visual cue connoting sickness. (However, please note that the article is written in standard journalistic style -- the style that most people believe is neutral. I'm just hypothesizing a bias in the photo used, which the author likely had no control over.)

I wondered, at first, why the woman in the photo had no eye makeup on, as the pre-operative procedures don't require a ban on eye makeup. Then I realized I was assuming the model was a woman and that most Indonesian women wear makeup. More on those cultural assumptions later.