Did you find that helpful? If so, maybe you can help me understand the new campaign advertisements from Strong4Life.com. In an attempt to get tough on childhood obesity, the messages do more harm than good.
Allow me, in the spirit of this blog, to pay particular attention to one the following image:
Good Ole Fashion Fat Shaming at it's finest- and at what cost? Girls, and then Teenaged Girls, and then Women, have learned to associate their appearance, particularly their weight, with their womanhood and ability to feel feminine. As this campaign picture enforces, fat girls can not feel girly. Weighty women are hardly women at all, with no inherent right to feel pretty. We're the ones that learn to be self deprecatingly funny and have "great personalities". (On that note.)
Hey, fat shaming is nothing new. What? Prove it through a few hand selected vintage advertisements? OK!
The biggest difference is that most weight related advertising is aimed to adult women to sell them a product or service, while the Strong4Life campaign is taking the guise of health and marketing to young girls and preteens, a ripe age for eating disorders to develop. The morale of the media is whether you are selling a product, a drug, or a "campaign against obesity", it's always fashionable to remind people that being fat is unacceptable- and remember, the younger this message is relayed, the better.
