Ads that piss me off - #2: Julie's Story

All right, get a coffee, get comfortable, cause this is going to be a long rant.

So I'm sure you've seen this ad campaign on TV - mention of mysterious "medical treatments" for weight loss featuring women with flat stomachs and normal looking thighs bemoaning their weight on the bathroom scale as they imagine what they would do with just "a few pounds less." Things like "I'd go shopping -right away!" and "I'd do a strip tease for my husband" and other such cliches. Well, they have now invaded the subway line in force and this was what greeted me at 8:15 on my way to work (which by the way involves understanding why young women develop adversarial relationships with their bodies as they go through puberty. Hmmm, let me think about that).

So let's start with the obvious. Women's sex sells. Put an ad of an ass in lingerie in the subway and get everyone's attention. I like that we're supposed to be experiencing this from the woman's point of view. "If I weighed a few pounds less, I'd do a strip tease for my husband." Well, where's the picture through her eyes of a loving and excited husband? Why are we not seeing the scenario - the room, the mood, the moment? Or how about even a picture of her still in the robe with a mischievous glint in her eye in anticipation of the fun of this? Or how about even a picture that includes her face?

But no, instead we get ass and thigh in black lace. And they're perfect ass and thigh. No cellulite, no scars, no flaws whatsoever. And they're, of course, a white ass and thigh. So the message is as always, thin, perfect, white. And that the only thing a woman has to offer for sex is her body. We don't need to see her face, her reaction, her emotions, her experience. We don't even need to see her whole body. Just her ass. That's all that matters. Another ad that purports to be for women and pro-women that has reduced women's sexuality to their bodies - oh, sorry, make that their "a few pounds less" perfect bodies.

Not to mention the fact that most men I know who would enjoy a strip tease wouldn't really be too concerned about an extra five pounds. I think they would like to see their wives being sexy regardless of five pounds. Most of the men I know wish their wives, girlfriends, lovers were more comfortable with their bodies and would be more comfortable with sharing their sexuality. This ad only promotes the fear in women that we are not sexy if we aren't perfect. It makes us hide our sexuality, remove it from our intimate relationships, and leave entire parts of ourselves unexplored because we are not perfect. It closes us off from ourselves, it closes us off from our partners, and interferes with our ability to express our sexuality freely, and it undermines our most important relationships.

What pisses me off even more is disguising this sort of damaging messaging as health promotion. Yes, way to promote health by encouraging women to obsess about their bodies, to feel that "a few pounds" "overweight" is a crisis requiring medical intervention. And let's be honest, there has never, ever, ever been a safe weight loss medical treatment. From PhenFen to ephedra to liposuction to very-low-calorie diets, none of them are safe. We're talking heart failure, kidney failure, death, unsafe. So the chances are that whatever this ad is promoting is also unsafe. And for the sake of 5-10 pounds, women should be risking their health? What????? WHAT??????

If we truly wanted women to be healthy, we would encourage them to keep their weight at a level that is medically healthy (and by that I mean if we removed all the crappy pressures and all the social problems that set women and men for that matter up for conflictual relationships with food and created a society that actually promoted healthy eating by making good food plentiful and affordable food and promoted exercise by making public spaces safe and inviting and made people of all sizes feel welcome, once all that is taken care of, the weight our bodies naturally settle at when free to just be) and then make peace with that whether it's 125 pounds or 165 pounds. We would encourage them to accept and celebrate themselves and enter fully into all of their relationships free of fear and self-monitoring. We would recognize the mutual and relational aspects of sexuality along with the purely sensory ones. We would allow women to live as whole, complete beings, "a few pounds" and all.

Stupid Julie's Story. Pisses me off.