Stupid "dieting" commercials

[fenchurch]

I have always had a bit of a bone to pick with so many of the commercials that are trying to play up the weight-loss capabilities of products, but lately it seems to be annoying me even more. Maybe because I've been losing weight and doing it the right way... keeping it nice and slow and nutritionally sound.

I just saw an ad for Special K cereal... a little girl had built a puffy snowman/woman and her mother came out wearing a long white coat with a scarf and gloves that looked similar to those worn by the snowman (which makes sense, duh, because the little girl probably swiped her mom's stuff to outfit her creation). And the little girl makes the comment "Mom! You look just like the snowman!" Mom, of course, looks at the snowman and doesn't see that they're dressed similarly... no, she looks at the snowman and sees that it's nice and rounded, so *obviously* her daughter meant that she was a bloated caricature of a person. I should point out that the actress playing mom is not even slightly overweight... at least not in this universe. She's actually quite thin. And yet the commercial then goes on to push Special K as a solution for quickly losing all that gross extra weight she so obviously has. o_O

Yoplait has a series of commercials with pretty much the same issue... with stick thin women lamenting their weight and extolling the virtues of Yoplait light yogurt in their plans to lose all that excess weight they don't have. And don't even get me started on Lean Cuisine, showing an office filled with spectrally thin women lamenting their need to diet and excoriating another equally thin co-worker because she doesn't appear to be dieting with them.

Grrrr.

Comments

[sp23.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I've always loved Richard Simmons is that no matter how mockable he is, he surrounds himself with real women with real weight problems, and he treats them with love and respect.

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

I actually bought one of his workout tapes, once upon a time, for that very reason.

[tammiriam.livejournal.com]

I'm responding to this thread instead of at the end b/c I had to compliment fenchurche on her userpic - I love those guys (Sesame St??). I am glad I'm not the only one who wants to hurl a large object at the TV screen when one of the many weight loss commercials comes on. B/w those and the libido enhancer ads, it's part of the reason I rarely watch TV. I will freely admit that I need to lose somewhere b/w 15 & 25 lbs, but I'm sure women's mags & those commercials would tell me I need to lose more like 35-50. Being underweight - pref. a size 2 - seems to be the only acceptable goal for women. If I were a size 2, it would prob. be b/c I was on my deathbed. I've already been trying to teach my 6-yr-old son not to use the word "fat" but overweight. A good friend told me she's taught her girls to think an overweight person "is not healthy" rather than "fat." I'd rather carry some extra lbs AND be able to enjoy a meal plus dessert than starve myself so society will deem me attractive.