Healthy or heavy? Cuz… ya know… you can’t have any fat on your body and still be healthy. For example, look at the woman in the ad. She’s very thin. She even put on a bikini to make sure that the scale didn’t add in the weight of clothes. And, she is STILL horrified by what the scale says! What hope is there for the rest of us?
*headdesk*
When I see things like this, I remember all those years I spent believing all the fat-hating BS in the “news” (I’m looking at you MSNBC & CNN) and in advertisement. Besides, if it wasn’t true, they couldn’t advertise it, right? Hah. The naivete…
Worse, I saw this advertisement while perusing the Buddhism section of Beliefnet.com. Beliefnet is a website that has a lot of spiritual stuff for all the main religions and a lot of less commonly followed religions as well. The focus is religion and/or spirituality. But, ya know… they still can’t resist posting plenty of things about how religion can make you thin and therefore “healthy”… and they have a prominent woman who writes articles under the name of “our lady of weight loss”, making her sound like some kind of saint of diets and thinness. Dieting and thinness is virtuous of course. Not dieting and accepting yourself is degenerate or something… grrr.
To be fair, I don’t read anything from the weight loss pages of Beliefnet, so it’s possible OLOWL isn’t all bad. Just her name and the headlines of what she writes alone has been enough to keep me far, far away. Besides, at this point, I find all this diet and thin=health crap very trite and cliche. Reading such things sounds as about enjoyable to me as listening to elevator music, when I’m feeling in a mood to let music lift my spirits.
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Do you mean they have found the secret to weight loss and it is only available on the net? Amazing! not.
I used to go for all the health stuff such as herbs, amino acids etc. Anything to quell my appetite. DH used to say, if that really worked don’t you think big pharma would jump on it, modify it a little and slap a patent on it?
It is kind of fun to watch the fads and ads come and go. From what little I have read akai is a fraud for weight loss. What a surprise.
I am bothered by the information that is supposedly more scientific because it seems so legit. I am so sick of hearing about the benefits of lycopene and anti-free radicals etc. Many people I know are obsessed with the stuff.
I also think we get our dieting style if you will by what was popular when we first dieted or became aware. My idea of weight loss is good, bad and must eat foods + calorie counting. Dh worries about too many carbs. My older sister is all about carbs and low fat. It feels so great to know I see through the crap and won’t get hooked.
Why don’t more people realize that diets and “lifestyle changes” don’t work.
I think it was in the early 1900’s when women would buy tape worms to stay thin. I bet in some (not so far off) future time that people are going to be really laughing at our diet obsession and the stupid things people are willing to do to try to achieve thinness.
I just read today that tanning beds have been proven to be one of the major causes of skin cancer. Everyone I ever knew that used a tanning bed used it cuz they thought a tan made them look thinner. One more stupid thing we do to try to look thinner….
I hate advertisements like this. They get to be simply objectifying, undermining just about every moral I support.
I have to say I’ve read two or three of your blog posts now, and they’re like a breath of fresh air. We all know the truth that all this pressure to be thin is shallow and wrong. But nobody SAYS anything.
Thanks for what you do!
~Courtney
Thank you so much for your kind words, Courtney! Comments like yours help keep me going when writer’s block rears its ugly head.
Welcome to the blog!
Your blog is very refreshing. I also hate the pictures in plus-size clothing ads that use thin models. Oh, and the models with perfect skin that are like 12 years old. Advertising has caused more damage and eating disorders than anything else.
I just re-read “Losing It” by Laura Fraser. It came out about 10 years ago but is still very pertinent. Anybody else read it?