Poor Girl

With all this mess about the Affordable Care Act / Obamacare website does anyone worry about this girl. She was chosen to represent this new opportunity for young people to sign up for health care, when all of a sudden the web failed her.

Sure, I know it was the software and the connections on such a huge proposition or all the parts and pieces not working together or just not enough time to test it; but there is this poor girl. Oops! I suppose I should be politically correct and call her a woman, but by her face, I’ll call her a girl. I’m old enough to get away with that.

Having worked in advertising I figured her pleasant smile was a stock photo. I could be wrong but most of those happy faces everyone sees on the web are stock photos. There is an industry out there providing images of examples of anything you can imagine. Models are hired and photographed in every sort of situation and sold to those who want to use the image to profit by.

So who is this young girl? I have no idea. I have not done the research or searched for the answer, but I do feel for her vanished image. Sweet looking white woman with dark hair staring out at the screen was to be invoking action by the viewer. Why only a Caucasian woman and not a group of diversity, I don’t know but I’m sure there was a marketing group who did surveys and presented PowerPoint presentation on only using this woman. 

And now she is gone. Buttons and symbols suggesting additional methods for obtaining information and registration for the ACA have replaced her. I’m sure some “news” program will pick up on this subject and she will be on the “Today” show in a few days.