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Observations on Black Friday

by | Dec 19, 2025 | Podcast Insights, Nanny State, Personal Responsibility, Public Health | 0 comments

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Observations on Black FridayIs the season of Black Friday sales. It’s interesting. Black Friday hails from the USA, the day after Thanksgiving, which we’ve had very recently. And like a lot of American trends, if you like, they do tend to spread around the world.

It is interesting. Australians who can remember back more than maybe 10–15 years—one does lose track of time—you know there was no such thing as Black Friday sales in Australia, certainly when I was a kid, and really not until, and look, if somebody knows the exact dates they started, please put it in the comments. My guess would be late 2000s, maybe somewhere in the 2010s.

But look, hey, people like a bargain. I get it. And it’s gone to a stage where you get Black Friday offers at the beginning of November, you know, get in first. And yes, it is the downhill run to Christmas. And I gather that the Black Friday sales now exceed the Boxing Day sales. You might as well get in and buy bargains before rather than after Christmas. I do get it.

And everybody’s got their offers. And this is advertising, and it’s absolutely fine.

So, interesting article which my attention was drawn to, and as always, we’ll put it in the description. It may be paywalled. I’m not sure if it is. Apologies, not much we can do about it.

But a swimwear company has done, surprise surprise, a Black Friday deal. They’re offering a discount on their swimwear. I’m not going to give them a plug. It’s female swimwear, so again, I don’t particularly want to give them a plug, but they’re offering 30% off. Good. Okay.

And they’ve done advertising on, in inverted commas, the dreaded social media. Surprise, surprise. And the image is of a woman lying on her abdomen, on her tummy. And she is topless, which is interesting given that you’re trying to sell bathers. And certainly there’s no bathers in the upper half of the body. But yes, you can only see her back, so it is quite okay. We don’t need to get excited about that.

But on her back is like a stencil of the name of the brand. There’s a line about the percentage off and a code. It’ll get people’s attention, I suspect. But it’s pale on the skin, so it makes it look like the area of the writing has got less pigment than the surrounding skin. Some of the surrounding skin looks a little bit more tanned, colored—whatever word one likes to use—than the area with the writing.

All right, point made. You can buy some bathers, and they’re on special. That ought to be the end of it.

And to be honest, I would not have come across this. This is not my genre. It’s not going to come up on my feed. I am not the target market. I suspect, you know, for those people who are, it will.

But the point that I’m getting to here, and you’re probably all wondering where I’m going with this, is that big public health just cannot let it be. They have to buy in.

And to be fair, yes, I have bitten and have taken the bait on this one because I think there’s a deeper point here.

According to a spokesperson—I’m not going to give a name, and I’m not going to give the organization, but you know it’s one of these public health bodies—the use of the image was worrying. It’s concerning to see images like this targeting people who might not realize that it’s a generated image.

Well, of course, it’s a generated image. Nobody’s going around with stenciling on their back to promote some brand. Maybe on your T-shirt, but certainly not on your back, and certainly not on a woman. Hello.

We don’t want people to aspire to that sort of look. Well, I don’t think anybody aspires to have advertising on their back unless they’re paid a huge amount of money. And even then, I think it’s questionable because where are you going to go? You’re not going to walk down the main street of cities with a bare back so people can read it.

So, it’s a non-issue. And apologies to people who are going to say, “Well, if it’s a non-issue, why am I talking about it?” I’m talking about it because of this nannying attitude that assumes every single person is a complete and utter idiot.

Nobody out there is incapable of figuring out that, number one, this is an ad. Number two, it’s obviously either an AI-generated image or it’s been photoshopped, and therefore, the writing is not on this person’s back. It’s been put in there artificially. Hello.

But no, everybody’s going to look at this and immediately want to go out and get sunburnt. That is actually quite demeaning.

Now, some people do spend too much time in the sun. It’s not a great thing. We do need some sunshine, and one of the problems with the sun-smart message—and it’s important that summer is coming up in the southern hemisphere—is that while you don’t want to go out and get sunburnt, we do need some sunshine because it provides vitamin D.

Back in the very old days, people would get a condition called rickets, which affected the bones. They didn’t have enough vitamin D. They worked in coal mines all day. So, like pretty much everything with the human body, too much is a problem. Too little is also a problem. There is a sweet spot.

We do not have to avoid all sunshine at all costs. And yes, in summertime, because we’re out and about, we may get a little bit of additional coloring on our skin. We’re not getting burned. It’s not that big a deal.

There is a difference between a pale tan and getting burned. And there’s a lot of work that does show that it really does take more severe sun damage over an extended period of time to contribute towards cancer.

So again, I want this point very clear: we don’t want to go out and get sunburnt, but we can spend a little bit of time in the sun. And particularly in summer, it’s going to make us feel better. Most people feel a little bit better about the world when there’s some blue sky and sunshine. It’s just the nature of human beings.

But this assumption that because people have seen an image, number one, they can’t work out what it is—it’s pretty obvious. And the target market, which is going to be younger people, if anybody’s going to figure this out, it’s going to be them. They are more tech-savvy than people sitting in ivory towers by a country mile.

Nobody, in my opinion, is going to change their behaviors because of seeing this image, with the one exception: maybe if they want a discount on this particular brand of swimwear and it’s the one they like.

So, I come back to the fundamental issue here, which is why we’re seeing, pretty much across the globe, a diminished trust in what authorities say about health.

Part of the reason for that is this all-or-none approach and treating people like they are idiots—that they can’t tell it’s an ad, that they can’t tell it’s generated, and that because of that, they’re going to go out and get sunburnt.

Respect is a two-way street. People have seen what’s been said, they’ve seen what’s happened in the real world, and they’ve formed their own conclusions.

How about a much simpler message that shows respect for people: we don’t think it’s good to get sunburnt, and there are reasons for that, including increasing your risk of skin cancer—so don’t get sunburnt. Pretty simple message. Much more effective.

So, Black Friday will come and go for this year. The sales will go on a little bit longer, then we’ll get into pre-Christmas sales, post-Christmas sales, New Year sales, and then Easter stuff starts to appear in the shops—unfortunately, these days, about two days after Christmas.

So, what’s the bottom line? Be sensible in summer in the sunshine.

And maybe, just maybe, for those in big public health institutions, make it a New Year’s resolution to treat the public with a little bit of respect—treat them as though they actually have the capacity to think for themselves and make their own decisions.

Yes, some of those decisions will be wrong. Nobody gets everything right 100% of the time. But show people some respect. Show them some faith. And if you do, they may be more inclined to respect what you have to say.

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