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

[geojlc.livejournal.com]

I'm there with you. Those commercials are just downright depressing...

[shallanelprin.livejournal.com]

Word.

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Those damn' adverts could drive me to think I'm fat, and I'm not. I hate to think what damage they're doing to others.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

The one I saw today was for one of those 100-calorie snack pack things, and showed a thundering herd of women following a truck full of them. It was downright bizarre.

[rosiewook.livejournal.com]

You're the second person to point out that particular Special K commercial. It is really silly.

But that's how these groups succeed. They find the weak point in many a woman's armour and stick a needle in it.

[julietvalcouer.livejournal.com]

I actually think she's a little on the pudgy side, but she may just have a round face. And I don't tend to find the Yoplait women stick-thin, either. (They are also probably smaller htan they look as everyone who's not bone-thin emaciated looks bigger on camera.) But then both the Yoplait and the Special K/cereal "diets" are meant for people who really just have 10-15 pounds to lose, and I question the sanity of anyone who can maintain a cereal diet for even the two weeks suggested. (Jimmy Dean takes a swipe at them in a commercial for their Jimmy Dean De-lites breakfast sandwiches, with the Sun convincing a grey-scale rainbow that she needs to eat something besides her cereal diet to get her color back.)

[allisnow.livejournal.com]

These products you mention are extolling their weight-loss abilities, but they know that someone who is seriously obese/overweight will never see real results by eating their product. So they have to go after women who aren't really in need of weight loss, but who they hope to convince that they DO need weight loss. And Sally-extra-15-lbs *points to self* is led to believe that, "Well, if SHE needs to lose weight, they I certainly do!"

It's the same - and yet, the opposite - reasoning behind the ED and hair-loss commercials that show guys who are way too long to be suffering from ED and hair-loss needing the products being sold. Old, fat, impotent bald guys suddenly don't feel so bad that THEY need the product, because so does that good-looking chick magnet in the commercial!

[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.

[dolphinchatter.livejournal.com]

The one I've found that I think backfires, is the Cheerios commercial for lowering cholesterol.

Wife has a bowl, a BIG bowl mind you, of cheerios. She asks her husband "What are you doing?" Husband has all sorts of tools a plans to work on home improvement projects. He's got a six month plan.
"What are YOU doing?" asks the husband.
"I'm lowering my cholesterol."

The next few shots are of the husband working hard, if not somewhat clumsily, while the wife, with the ever present BIG bowl of Cheerios, STUFFS HER FACE! EATING! ALWAYS EATING! Why isn't this a "You're eating too much" commercial?

[ceitnicangus.livejournal.com]

Yup I hate that one too.

The woman isn't fat and the little girl should have been chastised instead. But again oh those stupid womanzes are being sensitive again.

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

See, and I didn't even think the little girl was refering to her mother's weight... just the fact that they were dressed alike (which they were), while it was the mom who immediately leaped the conclusion that her daughter was calling her fat.

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

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

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

All of this makes me very glad that I haven't watched TV in years.

I mean, I watch TV shows—on DVD and on the internet—but I haven't actually seen a TV commercial since, like, 2006. I do not miss them!

[hollywdliz.livejournal.com]

I saw an ad for the Special K diet in a magazine -- cereal for breakfast, OK; nice big chicken salad for lunch, OK; for dinner: TWO TOASTER WAFFLES. WHAT. Recipe for screwing up your metabolism Y/Y?

[sillymagpie.livejournal.com]

The Special K commercial is annoying. "You can lose up to six pounds in two weeks by replacing a meal with Special K!" You know what? I've lost five pounds in two weeks by eating fewer calories and exercising more. :/

This also reminds me of a category of film that I loathe: The ugly girl who becomes beautiful when she has her hair done and eyebrows plucked. They always have some looker playing the "ugly girl," and the actress just dresses in dowdy clothes and has an unflattering hairdo. The role is never played by a girl who is not that classically attractive, but who learns to have confidence in herself.

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

That commercial makes me CRAZY. The woman is almost TOO thin.

[nmissi.livejournal.com]

UGH, that reminds me of LAST YEAR's Special K commercial- a thin mom in a big red bathrobe being taken for "santa" by her kid, because bent over from behind she somehow was supposed to look like a large fat man instead of, well, a thin woman in a bathrobe. I hated that commercial, and I hate this year's model as well.
I suppose they have to lie because if there's one thing cereal isn't, it's skinny-making.

[tomte.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. I can just imagine how they answer the phones at some of these places. "Lean Cuisine, how can we help reinforce your feelings of inadequacy today?"

Mutta.

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

Don't you remember when the "fat free" cookies came out and the insane women who chased the delivery man everywhere like women can't live without cookies? Reminds me of those... *shiver*

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

The worst thing about Special K?

It still has HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP in it! Most of the General Mills cereals have either reduced or gotten rid of HFSP, but not this so-called "healthy weight loss" cereal. I haven't touched a bowl in years, and I still manage to lose weight..

[pfeifferpack.livejournal.com]

OOOOO I was ranting about that very commercial just this morning! Jim agreed that they were out of their minds to think that woman was in any way carrying too much weight. It just sends a signal to all non-thin women that they need to lose weight (to sell their product being the bottom line).

No wonder we have a world filled with people who have no sense of a healthy body and have many eating disorders!

Kathleen

[julia-octavia.livejournal.com]

The commercials from the corn growers must drive you batty....

(Chemically it really is just sugar, and like any other sugar it can make you gain weight if you eat too much of it. The thing about the Special K diet is that it "works" if you use their portion sizes..which reduces calories, which makes you lose. I think it's just people can more easily control cereal portions.)

[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.