Nothing to Hide

Some years ago an eye-catching tv commercial for Elave, a skincare products company, provoked a rather discernible YouTube backlash. The ad showed completely naked laboratory staff technicians wan-dering, talking and studying in an ethereal-white open work environ-ment, apparently unaware of their nakedness. The literal message was that Elave had no worrying chemicals in its formulations and there-fore “Nothing to hide,” as asserted through the campaign’s tagline.1Curiously enough, in order to promote the safety of the work done in the house, the campaign choose a rather NSFW attitude. Yet it would be misleading, if not puritanical to target the stunt as the usual “sex sells” example: not only is it hard to detect any sex appeal in the per-fectly shaved humankind appearing in the spot, but digging deeper could reveal the subliminal and perverse way public institutions and private corporations are hiding work exploitation and new means for profit under pseudo ethical calls for transparency and openness.