It's Hard To Type This While Eating A Turkey Leg
I was looking to post something happy today, but I haven’t run across any great music videos or fat positive things today. (Tipsters, I need you.)
Instead, I ran across a new series of ads from Brazil (yes, that Brazil) for, apparently, a gym. The theme of the ads is “come to our gym, you disgusting fat person!”
Check them out on Too Fat for Fashion:
Like a lot of other gym ads they fall back on the idea that all fat people are grotesque eating machines. Look at all the silouhettes they’re chowing on ice cream or guzzling down drinks while they suffocate the thin people trapped in their stomachs. Clearly they’ve devoured these hard-bodied individuals in their mad cannibalistic quest for food. Even the translations “Give your slender body a chance to get rid of you” hammer in the idea that if you’re fat you are slovenly and/or unhealthy. And why would you want your body to “get rid of you” in the first place? God forbid you go to the gym, eat the same foods as everyone else and are still heavy. Apparently thats just too much for advertisers to comprehend.
And No More Mumus adds:
What annoys me the most is the fact that this is a well done ad. I’m not a graphic designer or an ad designer or whatever the technical term is, but the silhouette is really very interesting and striking. Use your powers for good, instead of evil, damnit!
It’s true; the ads are graphically very striking. But I wouldn’t in a million years sign up for a gym that viewed me like this. (Or, rather, that gave me the impression through their advertising agency that they viewed me like this.) Don’t fat people feel self-conscious enough in their spandex?
Not only that, but, last night I went to the gym, and I worked out on the elliptical next to another fat chick. (Although she’s up to 60 minutes, whereas I only did 35. Yes, I peeked.) And neither of us seemed to have a pack of Oreos stuffed into our gym bag, either.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advertising, Exercise, Fatism
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Dude, what is going on in Brazil? Remind me never to visit there no matter how great Mardi Gras is.
A friend of mind recently had a DDS bariatric procedure performed. She was “lucky” in that her health insurance covered most of the costs. But for others who would have to pay out of pocket, Brazil is a popular destination to have the procedure done because it is less expensive than in American hospitals.
For a country who has made a “Zero Hunger” program the centerpiece of its health and public welfare programs, it’s somewhat ironic to see all this backlash against obesity there.
Something positive:
http://www.adipositivity.com/
I am AMAZED by some of these photographs.
I’m trying to approach these as somebody with a marketing background and my initial reaction was that they are not targeting obese people but the types that are gym-addicts with not an ounce of fat, (or fun,) on thier ripped bodies.
That is, until I read the text which suggests they are in fact, targeting anybody who doesn’t fit the gym-addict mold. That’s where they messed up. Without the text, these would be effective, eye-catching ads. Instead, they are offensive.
Too bad they didn’t screw up like the (Danon?) yogurt ads that came out of Brazil. Those were definitely fat-friendly as far as I’m concerned! I was like–oooh! That’s my body! I’d look hot on a bed of roses…
I don’t know what I think about this.
Well, I know that I think that the silhouette is horrible and caricaturey. But then I also think the hardbodied girl is an unrealistic picture of the results of exercising, if you have other things apart from that in your life.
On the other hand: the fear that kept me out of the gym for many years was that everyone there would be tiny and slender. So I might well have responded better to an advertising message that said (a thousand times more subtly) “Not all our clients are picture-perfect natural athletes”.
I finally worked out on my own that this was probably going to be the case, but you wouldn’t know it from most gym advertising. “Come and exercise, everyone here is fit already.”
Positive music video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcRiXOONqf0
All I can think of while looking at this image is… “Ha ha, I have a Brazilian Skinny-Me trapped inside of my body, *sing-songy* and he can’t get out!”
GYMS CANNOT SAVE YOU FROM YOUR GASTRIC TOMB.