Ripping Off Posts From Big Fat Blog
Just checked in over at Big Fat Blog and found a few things I'd missed:
1. An interesting essay on The State of the F-Word. Any essay that contains the sentence "Fat is like a killer clown that may honk a horn at you" is worth reading, in my estimation.
2. The awesome Ampersand is hosting a Big Fat Carnival where you can nominate your favorite fat-positive blog posts. (Even from this very blog if you have any favorite posts. I personally will be hunting through the archives of Fatty McBlog, because those girls are fabulous. And Pound, obviously.)
3. A critique of Kirstie Alley's new Jenny Craig commercial, which features the song "It's Raining Men" which sort of tells you all you need to know. "Not only is it unreasonable to say that a woman must lose 50 pounds in order to find a man, but where are the men? In all of these commercials, it’s always a woman feeling alienated because of her weight. Obesity affects men, women and children—not just middle-aged women with withering self-esteem."
Thanks to Big Fat Blog, basically for existing so that I can steal all these links from you.
1. An interesting essay on The State of the F-Word. Any essay that contains the sentence "Fat is like a killer clown that may honk a horn at you" is worth reading, in my estimation.
2. The awesome Ampersand is hosting a Big Fat Carnival where you can nominate your favorite fat-positive blog posts. (Even from this very blog if you have any favorite posts. I personally will be hunting through the archives of Fatty McBlog, because those girls are fabulous. And Pound, obviously.)
3. A critique of Kirstie Alley's new Jenny Craig commercial, which features the song "It's Raining Men" which sort of tells you all you need to know. "Not only is it unreasonable to say that a woman must lose 50 pounds in order to find a man, but where are the men? In all of these commercials, it’s always a woman feeling alienated because of her weight. Obesity affects men, women and children—not just middle-aged women with withering self-esteem."
Thanks to Big Fat Blog, basically for existing so that I can steal all these links from you.
posted by mo pie at 10:11 AM
2 Comments:
(You're welcome!)
Diet commercials are usually directed at women, because 70% of all dieters in the US are women. They choose anthems like "It's raining men", because they know that's what will hit the right buttons with the largest segment of their target demographic.
How many women, overweight or not, already think/worry that being overweight will, in general, negatively affect their sex appeal with men? I'm not asking if it will, or if it should. I'm asking if you've *thought* it will. They're not creating the perception, they're appealing to an existing perception to sell their product. Does it reinforce the perception? Sure. Are they exploiting the perception for their own selfish purposes? Sure.
Now, compare it to an Enzyte/Viagra/Cialis/whatever commercial targetted at men. You'd better take Boner-Pill-X, or the ladies just won't dig you, and none of your male friends will respect you. It's the same trick, different angle. It's not a woman thing, it's not an overweight thing, it's an advertising thing.
Is it offensive because the advertising industry thinks so little of you, or is it offensive because it touched on something unpleasant you already believed?
None of this has anything to do with weight loss advertising. It's everywhere in advertising as a whole. They're not just targetting *this* insecurity, they're targetting *any* insecurity, because that's what sells product. You need Product X, or you will not be happy, sexy, wealthy, (insert what you want to be here).
In the advertising stereotype of humanity, women are insecure about their weight, while men are insecure about their hairline and their ability to "perform" in bed.
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