True Brilliance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was on the verge of posting something about how I’m noticing far less diet ads this New Year.  It seems the diet pushers were only waiting until New Year’s Day… or maybe I didn’t notice them until New Year’s Day. 

I think that it’s ridiculously ironic how a year ago, when the only website I ever visited that even mentioned weight was an eating disorder website, that my cookies still pulled in the diet ads en masse.  Some of them were extremely triggering.  It makes me wonder if the point IS to trigger (by some advertisers anyway). 

You gotta love how diet ads often show a picture of a very thin woman measuring herself with a tape measure.  This is wrong on so many levels…  First, it always gave me the impression that to finally be thin that I should be obsessed and do things like measure myself all the time.  Second, if this woman who is a size 2 needs to diet, I must be in BIG TROUBLE!  How do people see me on the street and not vomit straight away?  *head desk*

But seriously, 43 pounds in two weeks!  Two pounds in two weeks is potentially problematic.  What did this woman have to do?  My guess is that either this is an all-out lie of an ad or that the woman in the picture gave birth somewhere in that two-week time period.  At least, that is my hope, otherwise this woman’s health may be severely compromised by this extreme weightloss.

What is really sad is that these ads are successful enough so that advertisers keep posting them out there and really big mainstream media websites (I got this ad from MSNBC.com — you may have to refresh the MSNBC homepage a few times to find this ad, as the ads rotate through three different kinds of diet ads in the same ad slot) thinks such advertising is credible enough to put right next to their headlines of the day.  It’s just sad.  It’s even sadder that some folks, with cookies for eating disorder websites in their cache, are targetted for such triggering and all together misleading advertisement. 

The tone of some weight loss articles make me feel very bitey towards the authors.  “EAT THIS!  NOT THAT!”  ~ that old patronizing gem.  Seriously, who wants to be communicated to in this tone?  That these articles are so popular (especially at this time of year) doesn’t say great things about the collective body-acceptance and self-respect of our culture.

Like many other fat acceptance bloggers I’ve read, I reject the idea of new year’s resolutions, however, I support those of you who have resolved to resolve nothing for the new year!  You are more courageous than you know!

–AngryGrayRainbows