Think Before You Advertise

Just a few weeks/months ago, there was controversy surrounding a t-shirt that Urban Outfitters was selling on their website and in stores. It said "Eat Less." [I wrote a post about it that you can check out here.] Since then, the shirt has been pulled from stores as well as from the UO website. It just boggles my mind when a company endorses an idea like this- it really makes me wonder who signed off on this, thinking it was a good idea!!

Well, the Snack Factory, a snack company based out of San Francisco, is marketing their new pretzel thin pretzel snacks and has stirred up quite a controversy over their choice of creative advertising. The picture above is the ad, and while I try to avoid using triggering images, I thought that this image was relatively safe- and important to show! So, here is the Snack Factory's idea of clever advertising. Too bad their advertising campaign comes at the expense of millions of young women and men who struggle with this very lie that 'you can never be too thin'. In response, people in New York City have been covering these ads with pictures of emaciated women, and the phrase, "Actually, you can [be too thin]." The Snack Factory responded to complaints via Twitter by saying that they are "using the word ‘thin’ in a creative way to describe our product," and that people "seem to be interpreting it in their own way... we're a thin pretzel cracker!"

I get that they thought they were being cute and creative, but that does not make it appropriate or okay. When you choose to promote a pro-eating disorder belief as your advertising campaign, you have to take responsibility for it. Thankfully, the VP of marketing for the Snack Factory has heard the public outrage and is responding by pulling the pictures and ads. This is another reminder that speaking out makes a difference, and that we can truly make an impact! This is also a good reminder that more education about eating disorders is needed, and that we need to continue to bust the myths about eating disorders so things like this will become less frequent.

A Diet is a Diet is a Diet

Lately I've been ragging on celebrities- Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and now... Jessica Simpson. I've written about Jessica Simpson in the past (here and here) because she has been involved in many efforts to encourage women to examine what real beauty is, both through her show, Price of Beauty, and through her work with Operation Smile. She was also on Oprah a few months ago, sharing her thoughts about beauty, body image, and her renewed sense of self. At one point, she got teary-eyed and when Oprah asked her what she was feeling, she responded that she was frustrated by the pressure put on women by the media to be thin.

Well, this week, Simpson posted on twitter that she has started a strict vegan diet. While she later added that this diet has nothing to do with weight loss, and only has to do with being healthy, I was a little disappointed and surprised that after her campaign to focus on health, beauty and accepting her body, that she would publicly discuss her 'strict vegan diet' that she says 'shocked her system.' Because she has made body image and beauty her platform, it seems irresponsible of her to mention her latest fad restrictive vegan diet. Diets, as I have preached and preached about, are ineffective and BAD (why? find out here). If Simpson chooses to follow a vegan diet, that is her choice, but to announce that she has started a new diet puts the focus in the wrong place, whether this diet has to do with weight loss or not. Some may disagree with me, and that is ok! But I think that it would be better if she kept that information to herself, especially due to her history of engaging in fad and yo-yo diets and the ongoing scrutiny over her weight- as anyone hearing about her latest diet would naturally assume it has to do with weight loss (as all of her other diets have been in the past).

Our society is obsessed with dieting, who is eating what, losing weight fast, bodies, etc. It's tough to go onto facebook or twitter anymore without reading a status update or tweet about some kind of disordered behaviors/thoughts regarding food and exercise. I'm not calling anyone out here or thinking of certain people as I write this (well, maybe Jessica haha), but the more we call attention to these things, the more we are playing into the unhealthy dynamic created by the media. As much as Jessica Simpson has experienced criticism and pressure from the media, I would think that she would not want to perpetuate the focus and value on such things herself. I am afraid that by making a public point to share her latest diet plan, she is compromising the stance she has been trying to model with health and beauty. It's not that all of her progress and encouragement to women has been completely wasted and forgotten, but she is sending some pretty mixed messages. From here on out, it might be more helpful for her to refrain from promoting or discussing her current meal plan. And so should everyone else. We don't need a play by play via facebook or twitter about how many pounds you lost last week or how fat you feel or how intense your exercise routine is or how you can fit into your skinny jeans again. Food nourishes our bodies, it gives us energy and fuel to think well and be active. Let's keep the focus there and spend the rest of our energy, time and thoughts on things that matter more, like family, friends, our careers, and making the world a better place.

More on The Biggest Loser...

Back in April, I wrote about The Biggest Loser. Actually, I didn't really write about it so much as just post a link to a great article about it that someone else wrote! Follow this link to check out the post and article. Or if you didn't read that post (or the article) and don't feel like doing it now, I'll try to provide a quick re-cap : ).

First, I know that there are a lot of people who love watching this show (including some of my friends and family- hi guys!). This critique is not meant to encourage anyone to stop watching the show, but more so just to encourage critical thinking about what really is going on and if it is healthy! I watch a little TV that is regularly critiqued for many reasons (the bachelorette, for one- haha), so believe me, I am not throwing stones. But my overall thoughts on the show can be summarized by saying that the show seems to perpetuate some pretty unhealthy views regarding weight, body image, health, and happiness, as well as unhealthy, immoderate and unsustainable practices (exercising up to 6 hours a day?). The only reason that I bring this whole thing up again is because an article was published a few days ago by Kate Ward on Entertainment Weekly.com entitled "Former 'Biggest Loser' Contestant Claims Show is 'Dangerous'; NBC Issues Response." In light of my post a few months back, I thought that this article was an interesting follow up. Check out this link to view the article, or read the copy and pasted version for your convenience below! If you all have any thoughts or comments about this, I would love to hear them (as always)!

About twice a year, we tune into the latest season of The Biggest Loser and watch in admiration and awe as a dozen or so contestants quickly shed pound after pound from their bodies, until they’re left looking like healthy, happy individuals. But, if former contestant Kai Hibbard is to be believed, oftentimesBiggest Loser graduates are anything but.

The season 3 contestant — who lost 118 pounds on the show — appeared on CBS’ The Early Show this morning to discuss her claim that the NBC show is hurting its contestants, and promoting an unhealthy body image. (See the video embedded after the jump.) Beginning her interview by voicing appreciation for being part of something that has inspired people to lose weight, Hibbard went on to accuse Biggest Loser of supporting a “myth that’s dangerous,” and claims the show stretches the truth when it comes to its shooting schedule: “I have people that come up to me and talk to me and ask me why they can’t lose 12 pounds in a week when I did. It didn’t happen. It’s TV…a week is not a week in TV.” (Hibbard also discussed dehydration, which is used to affect the outcome on the scales, something Biggest Loser fans are already fairly knowledgeable about.)

The former contestant also went on to explain how Biggest Loser affected her own health:Hibbard says she suffered from an eating disorder after shooting wrapped, which only ended after her husband and friends staged an intervention when they saw her substitute coffee for meals, and began to notice her hair falling out. “I left with a very poor mental body image,” she said on the Early Show. “I found myself loathing what I looked like the more weight that I dropped because of the pressure on me.” What’s more, Hibbard claims at least six former contestants from seasons after hers have approached her to complain about their own unhealthy experiences.

When asked to comment, NBC issued the following statement to EW: “Contestants on The Biggest Loser are closely monitored and medically supervised. The consistent health transformations of over 200 contestants through nine seasons of the program speak for themselves.” Of course, Biggest Loser is not new to controversy — nearly every season, the show comes under fire from viewers and health professionals alleging the show’s lose-weight-fast format is unhealthy for its cast members, especially since the show seems intent on adding bigger and bigger cast members with each new season. (Just see the latest Biggest Loser winner, Mike Ventrella, the heaviest contestant to ever enter the ranch.) But now that a former contestant is alleging the show is dangerous, is it easier to believe?

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

While I was browsing People.com for my daily dose of celebrity gossip this morning, I happened to see that Jennifer Love Hewitt was featured alongside a big headline that read, "Jennifer Love Hewitt Advises Girls to 'Love the Way You Look.' Coincidentally, she was pictured in a white bikini, showing off her body that has significantly shrunk in recent days/months/years. Does anyone remember when she was photographed back in 2007 in a bikini and was publicly ridiculed for the way that she looked in the pictures?? She was raked over the coals for the shape of her body, and I remember reading about how she started dieting and working out to lose some of the weight after that happened. Here is a brief excerpt from an article written shortly after that time:

Late last year (2007) the blogosphere got pretty mean about actress Jennifer Love Hewitt looking a little heavier than normal. At the time she said she was a size 2 and that she wasn’t fat, but she mostly worried about how the attention would affect image-conscious girls who saw the media calling her fat. While she says the two aren’t connected, she’s lost 18 pounds in the last four months with the help of trainer Stevie Sant’Angelo.

Hmmm. It seems odd to me that those two things were not connected. But either way, I find it all the more ironic that she is doling out such advice to young women to love the way their bodies look, since her way of loving her body was to change hers! Jennifer Love Hypocrite?

While I cannot even begin to imagine the kind of pressure a female in Hollywood must face to conform to unrealistic standards of beauty, I also do not think that this justifies hypocrisy. If she loved what she looked like so much, why did she feel the need to change? She is sending such an unfortunate message to young women because while she is saying, "When I meet young girls, I'm always like, 'Just do me one favor, love what you look like right now – and remember I said it 10 years from now because it's the greatest gift I can give", her actions are telling a very different story. This quote was taken from the People.com article, which you can read by following this link. A few lines down, she says that she was so embarrassed by the pictures of her body taken in 2007 that she gave up eating 'her beloved donuts' and started fitting in workouts to her schedule so that she could 'get healthier.'

I am all for being healthy. Trust me. But it just seems like she is sending a very mixed message! And I think we are all too often inundated with mixed messages from the media, to the point that we fail to see things as they really are. It's helpful to expose mixed messages when we see them, and I would encourage you all to be mindful of what you see and hear! When it comes to the media, what you see is not what you get.

I guess I just feel bad for Jennifer Love Hewitt because I feel like she is really the one who is losing here. You never win when you have to change your outer appearance in order to love yourself and be happy. Yes, sometimes we do have to make changes so that we can become more healthy, but happiness and love are not dependent on or defined by how we look in a bikini, or how good we look in pictures. Happiness, love and beauty really do come from the inside out- not by losing 18 pounds in 4 months.

Race For The Cure and Body Image

The Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure took place in Raleigh, NC this past Saturday, and it was such an inspiring event. It held special meaning for me, as I have a grandmother and an aunt who have both battled breast cancer-- and survived!!! My aunt was actually in town from Oregon for follow up care at Duke, and so we formed a group and all participated together in this event. I have heard that participating in a Komen race is very different than other races, and as a first time participant, I think I saw why. First, there were SOOO many people that participated. If you look at the picture below-- it is a little tough to make out-- but as far as you can see, there are people that fill up the streets.

The other thing that seemed different to me was the heart and spirit in this event. I think that most people participating had been touched in some way by breast cancer. While my grandma and aunt are survivors, not everyone wins their battle with breast cancer. One of my friends that participated on our team lost her mother to breast cancer. Many, many people have lost loved ones to this illness and it is really heartbreaking.

The picture below is actually a shot of a few of the women that were on our team-- "Breast of Friends" : ) and you will notice the hot pink paper on these women's backs. These hot pink sheets of paper served as memorials to write names of people that you were walking in celebration of (survival), or in memory of, for those who have passed away. It was really sobering and emotional to see all of the names of people who have lost their lives to this illness. I think anytime, with any illness or disease, seeing names or faces make an impact because it personalizes the illness. In talking to my aunt over the course of her visit to Raleigh, she shared with me that battling and surviving breast cancer has changed her life and the way that she lives it in so many ways. One thing that she said that stood out to me was that she is thankful every single morning when she wakes up and realizes how blessed she is to be alive, and to have a body that works and is healthy.
This really impacted me and made me consider how her wise words can be applied to those of us who have not battled breast cancer! First, I think that her attitude of thankfulness is one to be emulated. There are a million ways that having an attitude of gratefulness and thankfulness can impact us-- as well as those around us. Whether it means that we worry a little less, we appreciate what we have more, or take our eyes off of what we lack and what we wish we had and focus on what we do have, it is always good to have perspective, and to live in a way that reflects that attitude.

Secondly, I think that this relates to body image and the ways that we think of and care for our bodies. I want to be clear, like I am often, that eating disorders are a mental illness. Part of having an eating disorder (diagnostically) is experiencing a severe disturbance and preoccupation with one's weight, shape, size, body-- so this is in no way meant to minimize the severity and nature of these thoughts. What I will say though, is that for those of us who struggle with body image and have a negative self-image, this may be a good reminder and an encouragement about all that our bodies can do for us, and how blessed we are to have bodies that are able to function how they are supposed to, that allow us to be active, and that allow us to experience life! Yes, it may be upsetting when our jeans fit more snug; yes, it may get you down when you flip through a magazine and see nothing but airbrushed 'beauties'; and yes, it may be frustrating when you don't feel good about yourself! These are all feelings that most women have experienced before, so you are not alone! But I will encourage you with the words of my brave aunt, who said that she wakes up every morning, thankful to be alive and to have a body that works. Rather than focus so much on the way that our bodies look, maybe if we start to appreciate all that our bodies do for us, and the fact that they allow us to experience life, we may begin to embrace our bodies a little more and appreciate them for what they are and what they do for us.