Taggin' Hash Tuesday: Break Society's Mirror

Today’s Taggin’ Hash Tuesday is focused on one of our self-made tags: #makeyourownmirror.

Today I was watching T.V. and a commercial for Slimquick came on. Now, commercials are a great place to find logical fallacies and stereotypes, and this weight loss ad was no exception. Please use the following link to view the ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSgOtKTF1xc

"Yes, love muffin."

So, the WW and myself have several objections to this commercial, but the main one is that it totally goes against the #makeyourownmirror mantra. This commercial MAKES the mirror FOR YOU, and encourages a specific type of body. That body, a normalized, slim one, is then used in the commercial to demonstrate the woman’s increased value as a partner and as a person.

When the woman starts throwing food out of their picnic basket (symbolizing their dieting), something happens, but not what she wants.  Her male partner begins visibly losing weight, but she stays the same.  After she throws out the chocolate cake, a food that would be considered a GREAT SACRIFICE for a WOMAN, she gets irritated and tells her partner that he better plateau and wait for her.  This commercial encourages a competition between partners, but not really a competition about getting healthy.  Instead, it depicts a competition based on giving up certain foods, including foods that are not purely unhealthy, like cheese or bacon.  Obviously these foods are not good for you in excess, but they are also a staple in many healthy diets.

After she prompts him, he affirms her hesitantly with a food-related nickname.  When she starts throwing food out and he starts getting visibly thinner, he also seems much happier.  Once she gets to the final item, the chocolate cake, she keeps a piece (Fat Girls can't say no to chocolate cake) and tells him that he better plateau or else, but then he comically takes a bite of the cake before being replaced by SlimQuick, a supplement that is named for the desired physical size of women rather than the health (which also fuels the unhealthy competition of becoming a visibly smaller size rather than being healthy).  This statement about the partner plateauing is intended to be comical, but really just badly reinforces the stereotype that in a heterosexual relationship, the woman calls the shots at the expense of the man's happiness.  He agrees with everything she says, he gives her sweet nicknames, and he must change the way he looks to match what she wants.

A common theme for women during dieting is "good behavior vs. bad behavior."  It is always clear what kinds of food constitute bad behavior when dieting: chocolate of ANY SORT, too many Cheetos during snack time, a baked good when you weren't planning on a baked good, basically any carbs, etc.  After eating any of these foods, women feel the need to make justifications, like, "I just won't eat dinner," or, "I'll do extra sit-ups."  Once making these justifications, dieters feel like they are committing to a good behavior.

Underpinning all of the above stereotypes is the humorous tone of the commercial. Obviously the WW and myself do not find it funny, but the commercial is clearly targeted to an audience that would find the relationship humor and pokes at fat people/women funny. This feeds into another myth that we will bust in a future Fat Myth Monday (ohhhh, teaser!): A Common Way that Fat People can Assert heir Worth is Through Being Funny.

So between the funny woman-in-charge and the cutesy nicknames, this ad encourages the audience to laugh and sympathize with the fat-girl's-plight-to-be-skinny as opposed to the fat-girl's-plight-to-be-HEALTHY(WHICH IS NOT ALWAYS SKINNY)-and-find-self-worth. Thus, the mirror created for the audience is one of heteronormativity and bodynormativity, encouraging women to APPEAR physically fit (to be SLIM QUICKLY...rather than healthy in their own time) and feel ashamed of having a different body type.

It is advertisements like this that reinforce the very stereotypes, norms, and assumptions that the WW and myself are trying to combat. Within two or three minutes between your favorite T.V. show, all of the stereotypes we just discussed are reinforced as accepted norms, sometimes without us even noticing. That's the danger of this type of advertising--it doesn't leave much room for questioning, because it is over so quickly and it leans on "studies and research" to credit its claims. The end of the commercial--in which the product discusses targeting women's metabolism and body chemistry specifically--is an example of this. Perhaps the only redeeming quality about the commercial is that it acknowledges that women's bodies are biologically unique and different from men's (at least in terms of weight loss, hormones, metabolism, etc) but at the same time all of the weight-loss-all-natural-formula mumbo-jumbo encourages us to "trust the experts." Now I ask, why should we trust their research if they are going to preface it with offensive stereotypes and not mention any research to the contrary, which discusses health rather than body size? It is so important to analyze what we are being exposed to everyday with these types of ads, and as always it is ultimately important to fight these stereotypes and #makeyourownmirror.