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Gillette ad features an unapologetic fat woman in a swimsuit; heads explode (See Staff Post)
- Thread starter PixelatedProphet
- Start date
Theres a lot more to being obese than just eating. Its psychological and genetic.
Yall some shit for saying that an ad can't include a person because theyre a certain size. Like fat people aren't allowed to be happy, or represented. We should just shame them so they have no self esteem to even better their health.
And i like how you said "extreme" anorexic case like its ok to be anorexic as long as no one can tell.
Like foh.
Society and cultural issues being the cause of the epidemic does not mean that it is not a choice being obese.
You aren't going to go into withdrawal symptoms, you'll just feel hungry while your stomach shrinks to normal sizes.
I smoked for years, quit cold turkey a year and half ago, haven't touched one since. I used to smoke right after meals, right before I went to bed. The 2 days of physical withdrawal were by far the hardest part.
This is just being obtuse and indicative of how normalized even just being overweight has become.
A big part of the problem is most people don't realize how low the bar actually is to be considered obese.
Of course, but even one post quoted would be useful as a reference when someone is referring to how the thread, or forum, have/has a hard-on for hating fat people.
Also, just as a note - as I appreciate the context is lacking from the quote - it wasn't an attempt to provoke moderation either. I wasn't angling for intervention or punishment, or thinking there was a rule, just saying how without the post as a reference it's hard to discern to what extent the paint is being applied with that brush when it does reference as broad a category as the thread or forum. I was prompted for examples of people posting without that context so quoted a few.
Also, if someone is being an asshole and throwing insults around, a quote helps to navigate to a report if missed on initial reading. If they're upsetting you and are insulting they deserve to be flagged for review.
Is there a problem with crack addicts not being allowed to do non-crack related things without shame? It's not that hard to both believe that obesity is a problem, and to also believe that obese people should be treated like people, and allowed to do normal everyday things without constant shame.
Maybe if the ad was celebrating obese people eating unhealthy food I'd agree that it's bad. In fact, advertisements in general celebrating eating unhealthy food is bad. If you want to be mad at anyone, you should mad at food advertisements. Those should be treated like cigarette advertisements, because the unhealthy addiction comparison is still correct.
Not at all. Nor should a meth addicts addiction be what defines them as a person. But neither disease should be trivialized in its seriousness.
It just made me roll my eyes so hard, that you made a vague criticism of people posting in the thread for not quoting posts they took issue with, and didn't quote any examples yourself. It was just that lack of self awareness that made me raise an eyebrow. Nothing more nothing less. I don't think you needed to quote examples any more than the posters you were talking about, for the record.
I'm sorry but being overweight or obese doesn't interrupt a persons ability to live a fairly normal life in the same way that a serious drug addiction does. Fat people aren't generally losing their houses and shirking their life responsibilities for their food addiction.
I'm glad you felt the need to broadcast the eye roll in favour of actually engaging with the more discussion-oriented posts, or replying to the content of my post which was in direct response to your own.
I hope your eyes are fine, and sorry for expecting more when engaging with a moderator.
You asked me directly why I would draw a reference to some posts as being about the forum/thread instead of Twitter, so I responded saying that it was because many explicitly did.:
You decided to then press for examples, and when given just lament about how much you rolled your eyes over the original post.
There is nothing beautiful about obesity. Let's not teach our children that there is nothing wrong with being overweight.
If the crack addict wasnt actively using in the ad? Then yeah, kinda the same, and I'd be fine with it. Obesity is a forward facing issue. She is not actively gorging or overeating in the ad.
Are you under the impression that there arent a ton of drug addicts being featured in TV, movies, and ads? Like, modeling and cocaine have been known to have some overlap, right? You just dont know when you're looking at a drug abuser in the same way you can know you're looking at someone who may have food issues.
Another thing to consider is that we don't currently know how this woman is currently living her life. She could very well be on her journey to weight loss, and it's likely a very long one. If you saw me, you'd probably be inclined to think "Jesus exercise some" or some shit, not realizing that I've lost 100 pounds and hike 4 miles, 6 days a week.
If somebody can find happiness regardless of how they look, I'm happy for them. The last thing a person needs that is working hard to change themselves is negativity and even nastiness thrown their way.
If somebody can find happiness regardless of how they look, I'm happy for them. The last thing a person needs that is working hard to change themselves is negativity and even nastiness thrown their way.
I have to question how well you really, deep-down understand the constant mental, psychological, verbal and physical abuse lobbed at people who are even mildly overweight, let alone obese, and how that perpetuates an unending cycle, since in another topic you stated -
I'm sorry but do you not recognize that obesity and poverty are very intensely linked at least in the US? Families that have parents forced to work multiple jobs to barely stay afloat will turn towards the easy choice to feed their kids because they don't have the ability to make a meal. In many places getting access to fresh food is significantly more difficult than just buying a fast food meal.
In these instances children of those families are quite literally born into obesity. And you can say that well a child could choose to exercise, but in many cases that isn't true either. They may have to end up caring for their younger siblings because their parents are working multiple jobs and aren't able to care for them. Or they may even have to get a job as well to assist their parents.
Obesity is a problem and it needs to be dealt with I agree, but it isn't nearly as much of a choice as many people like to claim it is.
I was morbidly obese for most of my life. 300+ pounds. I'm at around 200 now, up from the 165 I was at about a year ago.
Not overeating is a constant battle. I am never not hungry. I've tried every "filling" diet there is, tried every chemical composition to promote satiety. It's been nearly two years since hitting my minimum weight and the hunger never once abated. And it hurts knowing that not only is it easy to fall back into bad habits, the society I live in wants to make it as cheap and easy as possible for me to do so, and then shame me for having such a weak will to fall back into it.
TIL that obesity is the same as having a fucking meth addiction, and that if some rando can quit smoking in two days then nobody has an excuse to be overweight. Some of this shit is disgusting.
As a PT I hate the normalizing of people that are obese. There are so many health problems that come with being that over-weight. I see so many people in my line of work that have so many conditions due to being over weight and obese.
I am still not going to body shame them, but I am not going to speak positively about being so unhealthy either. We should not being making obesity a positve thing.
I am still not going to body shame them, but I am not going to speak positively about being so unhealthy either. We should not being making obesity a positve thing.
Bingo. These are directly linked, and the worst thing is that if you grow up in that environment, its VERY hard to break these food habits and mentality. Poor people in the modern world don't typically starve, they are subjected to having to sustain themselves on cheap deeply unhealthy processed foods.
and multiple studies have shown now that once you have become a certain weight. The human body VERY ACTIVELY resists losing that weight and keeping it off. That higher weight becomes your bodies "new normal" and thinks anything below is starving itself.
Huh, yeah, it does. Especially later in life, when it all catches up with you. And especially if you're having to pay medical bills in the US.
But a crack addict, like a meth addict, is probably going to look like this
That's the fringes of drug abuse. Lots of people might take some coke now and then, and you can't really tell (especially in the acting industry you referenced). But you go to the fringes of drug abuse and that's when the body deteriorates. Visually and physically.
You can't tell me if Gillette used an outer fringes drug user with lines, marks, no teeth or facial deterioration there wouldn't be a mass debate/conversation?
You could liken people who take drugs but not to an extreme, to people that are overweight but not to an extreme. It's probably not affecting your health, even although you are beginning to push your body.
Being morbidly obese is not just being overweight. Taking coke a few times in your life, or now and then isn't necessarily being a coke/drug addict.
That's part of the issue with this public discourse. Reframing being overweight as being obese and/or suggesting mild drug use is being an addict. You downplay and/or possibly normalize the extremities of either condition/illness.
That's not entirely true. If you are morbidly obese, food is controlling your whole life and can absolutely ruin your ability to lead a normal life.
Not in exactly the same way, but being obese can absolutely interrupt and be of detriment to living a normal life in similarly critical and debilitating ways. You can't focus on the end of the pipeline for the drug user and the beginning for the obese person. Health complications arising from obesity can destroy, if not end, a person's life.
Where did I mention anything about attraction? Body positivity isn't about that.
SOME extraordinary cases yes. But the VAST majority of people considered overweight or obese live very normal lives, they just eat a little bit more every day than others. It doesn't take much, and the classification for "morbidly obese" is much lower than people think it is.
I do not agree that this makes the ad weird. Meth users with meth sores need an introduction because the majority of people have no experience with this (people who used meth in the past year in the US are 0.4% and in the past month 0.2%). But obese people are a part of and daily life for nearly everyone and need no introduction. (US overweight population is > 70%, obese is 39.8%.) Pointing out the obvious would be even stranger, IMO.
But even then, neither meth addicts nor obese people should be defined by their problems anyway. This is especially true in an ad like this, where the ad is about not being afraid and living your life no matter what you look like. The model's obesity doesn't matter beyond that. If someone with meth sores was modeling in the ad instead, it wouldn't matter why they got the sores, what matters is they're not worried about their skin holding them back.
Otherwise, every ad featuring an overweight person (i.e. 71% of the US population) would be like "This lady has depression which caused her to overeat, and now she's obese. But she enjoys playing the slots at Foxwoods Casino and Resort." Or "This guy was raised in a poor household with a poor diet, and he never managed to get the weight off. But he always starts his day off with Folgers." Or "This woman became pregnant and ended up gaining weight that was hard to drop, especially with her responsibilities as a parent. But she still shops at Target where we're having a 30% off sale."
It's amazing how that works huh, and really just depends on the argument the person is trying to win. People will tell me that food addiction isn't a real thing and there is no excuse for a person to be fat and then the next argument being fat will be compared to drugs and other disorders like anorexia! Fat people can't win. Hell they can't even be happy in an ad apparently. I think some people wish they could just Thanos fat people away from existence.
Exactly. I fail to see "shave your legs and go to the beach" as some kind of unrealistic or dangerous message.
Morbid obesity is literally anything over 40 BMI. That's not "much lower" than people think. That's like more than a hundred pounds excess weight on a 6'1'' male frame. Don't trivialize that shit.
I'm glad you seem to understand now that trying to police behavior in a thread, while not following your own example isn't helpful to the discussion. I'm happy to leave it there.
What about if they used a meth addict on the road to recovery? Again, why this presumption that the woman in the advert isn't making healthy choices? What's her blood pressure? What's her lung capacity? We see her enjoying the outdoors. We don't want to encourage that?But a crack addict, like a meth addict, is probably going to look like this
That's the fringes of drug abuse. Lots of people might take some coke now and then, and you can't really tell. But you go to the fringes of drug abuse and that's when the body deteriorates. Visually and physically.
You can't tell me if Gillette used an outer fringes drug user with lines, marks, no teeth or facial deterioration there wouldn't be a mass debate/conversation?
You could liken people who take drugs but not to an extreme to people that are overweight but not to an extreme. It's probably not affecting your health, even although you are beginning to push your body.
i dunno, when i try to quit cold turkey i can only go like 20 hours before i start to get insane cravings for it
The fact that an obese person has the audacity to make themselves happy is dangerous. We cannot allow those people a second of reprieve. /s
We have someone in this thread claiming that we don't know that the woman is morbidly obese.
Many people think obesity starts where the morbidly obese line is.
FTFY
This isn't just an issue unique to fat people, this shit pops up in threads about ableism as well and it fucking sucks. I don't even consider myself crazy progressive but apparently just wanting people to live puts me above most others.
I think it's awesome to promote the mentality but the physical aspects of being overweight are not to be ignored.
That's my opinion as far as a discussion goes and I don't think this advertisement is hurting anybody. I think the overwhelming majority of advertisement does tend to lean on healthier looking people so I see nothing wrong with this minority of advertising the other end of the spectrum.
I think it's obvious that everyone's health and well-being is ideal and something that we all want and should be pushed but I can see why they chose to advertise this way. As for the woman in the advertisement, I'm happy that she is comfortable enough in her skin to shoot for the advertisement.
That's my opinion as far as a discussion goes and I don't think this advertisement is hurting anybody. I think the overwhelming majority of advertisement does tend to lean on healthier looking people so I see nothing wrong with this minority of advertising the other end of the spectrum.
I think it's obvious that everyone's health and well-being is ideal and something that we all want and should be pushed but I can see why they chose to advertise this way. As for the woman in the advertisement, I'm happy that she is comfortable enough in her skin to shoot for the advertisement.
Eh, this ad makes me side eye Gillette more than anything. They don't care about her or your body image, it's just a marketing trick to get people to talk about the brand. They knew this would create both negative and positive buzz around the brand and that's what they wanted. I know one thing for sure though, they wont be putting a medically anorexic woman on any of their other ads. Why? Because Gillette knows featuring morbidly obese woman in advertising is a hot topic at the moment and they banked on it.
As for the model, people need to stop harassing her. Some of the comments on Twitter and a few here were really dehumanizing. It's not in good faith at all to pretend your insults are actually about helping her.
As for the model, people need to stop harassing her. Some of the comments on Twitter and a few here were really dehumanizing. It's not in good faith at all to pretend your insults are actually about helping her.
What? Suggesting it would be useful if people would quote posts when painting the forum or thread with a single brush is somehow policing behaviour?
Also none of that has any bearing on my post, which you've once again ignored in favour of taking yet another jab.
"Venus is committed to representing beautiful women of all shapes, sizes, and skin types because ALL types of beautiful skin deserve to be shown. We love Anna because she lives out loud and loves her skin no matter how the "rules" say she should display it "
The very tweet explains it.