bad advertising

Research: Women Are Supposed to be Fat [The flat abs myth]

January 2, 2012

If we’re sincere in our desire to “just be healthy” that may mean embracing more fat – both in our diets and on our bodies. Psst, Adele – LOVE you. Lose the cigs!! “Get ripped in the new year!” “Have the lean body of your dreams!” “Six-pack abs in 6 weeks!” “Burn fat up to 400 times faster!” Thanks to the advent of Resolution-Making Season (also known as the fitness industry’s Santa) and an e-mail address that seems to be on every marketer’s PR list, I’ve been getting a slew of “get shredded” pitches every day. The products are wildly [...]

61 comments Read More →

Photoshop: On a Scale From Christmas Card to Cyborg (New research quantifies how much is too much)

December 5, 2011

One of these things is not like the other… psych!! They’re actually ALL exactly the same body. Just with different heads creepily pasted on.  “Everyone’s doing it” is not generally considered a great argument in regards to our health and yet when it comes to Photoshop and other advertising tricks a lot of people are saying that if we can’t beat them, join them. And, surprising even myself, I think I agree. I use photo-editing software on my pictures for this site, in fact. But in my opinion it’s all a matter of scale. For instance, I crop and color-correct [...]

64 comments Read More →

Dinner Served With a Heaping Scoop of Guilt. [Does tough love motivate you?]

September 19, 2011

  The pizza plate reads “Do you really need that second helping?” Inscribed with sayings like “For the love of god stop eating,” “It’s hard to be around you when you eat like this,” and simply “Big Mistake.”, a new line of plates and bowls cutely named Intervention Ware chide you even if no one else is around to see you pull out the Ben & Jerry’s at midnight. But are these dishes are motivating or just chanelling your abusive ex-boyfriend?  Does the tough love approach really work? As long as overbearing grandmothers have been around, tough love has been [...]

64 comments Read More →

The Truth About Fitness Models [Baby, I was born this way?]

September 13, 2011

I love this ad! I bet Death is a smoker. Everything I learned about fitness models I learned from a stripper. Well, an ex-stripper. She was at the book-signing table next to me at local event a while back and because neither of us were selling any books (book signing = sitting and trying not to cry into the water you had to buy for $5), we ended up chatting most of the night. First, I learned a lot about the stripping business as she was selling a book about how to apply stripping principles to the business world (they [...]

52 comments Read More →

Is The Furor Over This Yogurt Ad Justified?

June 15, 2011

Oh how I love Natalie Dee! Expensive little non-eco-friendly cups of skim dairy, artificial sweeteners and fruit of dubious origin – I have little love for conventional yogurt.  With all the great health benefits of full-fat plain yogurt that is not only super cheap but super easy to make at home in your crockpot, I don’t see any need to buy the processed stuff. But for all that it is not, is Yoplait a trigger for eating disorders? Watch this first (possible trigger warning for eating disordered thoughts): It’s an advertisement for Yoplait lite yogurt that features a woman looking [...]

53 comments Read More →

Is “Pretty” A Compliment? [Plus 3 things guaranteed to make you giggle]

June 2, 2011

I couldn’t find the actual ad we were looking at but this one is pretty similar – it emphasizes the “look” over the function. Plus I think this ad is freaking hilarious. (For those of you non-yoga types, the model is doing Camel Pose.) “I don’t think I like the word ‘pretty’ in that ad,” the woman said, to no one in particular. “I agree. It’s like because we’re women, advertisers automatically assume we want to be ‘pretty’ over other things.” Another woman responded. “Yeah, I’d rather it said ‘stylish’ or something,” concluded the first woman. “I don’t think they [...]

60 comments Read More →

How to Help A Child Lose Weight [Help a reader out!]

May 24, 2011

Courtesy of the State of Georgia’s new childhood obesity campaign Three hours of hysterical sobbing, a whole box of kleenex thrown and self-inflicted eye poking (yes, really) is what my third grader did when I assigned him a second sheet of math problems after he lied to me about having homework so he could go play with a friend after school. I am well aware that kids often do not do what we want them to. But then if parenting was meant to be easy they would’ve given us the user manual in the hospital. Instead we do everything we [...]

48 comments Read More →

Should You Count Calories… In Your Workouts? [Measuring workout efficacy.]

May 10, 2011

Trust me, this is one exercise video you do not want to miss! (Eurotrain!!!) *A huge thank you to everyone for your patience yesterday- as you may have noticed, my site was down for most of yesterday due to problems on my web host’s end. Thanks for all the e-mails & sympathy! We seem to be back in business now…* You’ve seen the workout program ads: in between shots of glistening, contracting abdominals and hyper smiling people who only sweat in socially acceptable places – your amped up cleavage if you are a woman, your shaved pecs if you are [...]

80 comments Read More →

Karl Lagerfield Wants to Sell You Ice Cream [And then mock you for getting fat]

April 25, 2011

Skinny Girl Eating Ice Cream: A study in social morés. Eclipsed only by the Fat Child Eating Ice Cream tableau vivant, nothing brings out more opinions than a thin girl with a cone. Some people are jealous: “Lucky genetic freak gets to eat ice cream and still look like that?!” Others are sad: “I’ll never be thin.” Others moralize: “Ice cream is bad for you, skinnyfat girl!” Some diagnose: “That has eating disorder written all over it – I remember when I used to starve for an entire day just so I could eat ice cream.” And some resolve: “I want [...]

86 comments Read More →

Selling Weight Loss to Children [Are kids the next casualties in the diet wars?]

April 19, 2011

“Tell me I’m not angry for no reason!!!” was the subject line on an e-mail from Gym Buddy Lindsey. I tried to imagine what would be so upsetting as to require the use of a double negative and extraneous punctuation.  That it continued with “I’m so pissed!!!!!!!!!!” only made me more intrigued. (And more entertained – you have to know Lindsey, she’s a very passionate person! We’re friends for good reason is all this tempest-in-a-teapot is saying.) She writes, “I just saw a commercial of a girl no older than fifteen talking about how she didn’t fit in at school [...]

75 comments Read More →

← Previous Entries