The Blackheath Bugle has helpfully brought to my attention the nauseating KitKat Senses billboard that has been all over the country recently. I hadn't actually seen it as I have been in Germany for the last few weeks merrily stuffing my face with stollen and not-so-merrily going round history museums and concentration camps, but it really is totally eurgh.
This isn't exactly an original campaign - this sort of thing has been happening for years, from Flake through Galaxy to Mars Delight. Yep, us women are all slavering chocaholics.
Indulge yourself, go on, you deserve it. Mmmm, creamy and delicious, mmmmm, MMMMMMMM, indulge yourself, fellate it in a bubble bath surrounded by candles because you deserve it, you goddess, you! Go on, indulge yourself, be NAUGHTY, you know you need it because your sex life is shite and you've been eschewing carbs for God knows how long, so what you really need is a quick hit of refined carbs that will cause you to moan in ecstasy. Mmmmmmmmmmmm......
It's that time of year again! Christmas is over, and if you're a walking stereotype you'll have stuffed yourself silly and - horror of horrors! - gone up to a size 12.
Obviously ads for discounted gym memberships are all the rage on the Tube at the moment, and women's magazines are chock full of the latest miracle diets (personally I was always rather a fan of Bridget Jones' patented weight loss method - "Simply replace food with sex"). 'Tis the season to be hungry, not to mention squeezing yourself into a little lycra number and punishing your wayward physique on a treadmill. But that's just advertising n stuff, and there's nothing wrong with it really, especially since a lot of people really could benefit from eating better and getting more exercise.
However, the mania that women seem to get into for losing weight around this time of year seems pretty extreme. I wonder what the average Christmas weight gain actually is. It doesn't seem to justify the dieting hell.
It's pretty difficult to get away from. I work in an office full of boys, but at lunchtime today I went to visit a friend in a girl-dominated department and found that all the talk down there was about diets. They were all on diets, and my friend is determined to drop two dress sizes, a change which I personally think will leave her far too thin, not to mention grumpy from chocolate withdrawal, and I told her as much. I certainly felt rather awkward sitting in there eating two desserts (look, I couldn't decide between them, ok?) whilst everybody else in the room was presumably getting through the day on Ryvita - I don't know, I didn't see anyone eat a thing.
I actually did gain a bit of weight whilst I was on holiday - for someone accustomed to a high level of exercise it's inevitable. But I really don't believe in restricting what I eat. I don't know how girls do it. I just couldn't. When I'm hungry, my concentration goes. I can't focus on my work because I'm too busy daydreaming about sushi, or pasta, or pecan pie, or whatever scrumptious dish I am most craving. I feel light-headed and dizzy. I have to eat. And apart from the risk of passing out, I just refuse on principle to do anything to myself that stops me from functioning properly. I will be strong, alert, quick-witted and good at my job thank you very much, even if it does mean that I am a few pounds heavier.
Dieting at this time of year is almost a girl bonding ritual. You feel left out if you don't join in. You feel awkward for eating anything except salad. You start to wonder if you could stand to lose a few pounds yourself. And, if you're me, you start to feel pretty pissed off about it and say, goddammit, I reserve the right to eat bread. In fact, because I'm just so naughty I'll have butter on it too.
All I can say is, thank goodness for boys. I love my female friends but they drive me bats at this time of year.
This is a great film and promotes a really important issue - that the cosmetics industry negatively affects young girls as well as grown women. However, these campaigns that try to persuade us to love our bodies, warts and all, really bug me sometimes. Basically, cosmetics companies seem to be using two types of women in their advertisements these days: Models, and Real Women.
The models, those leggy, perma-tanned, airbrushed gazelle-like creatures, have been around for a while. But the Real Woman is a relatively recent phenomenon. The Real Woman is voluptuous, relatively small-breasted and uses few cosmetics. She loves her body and she revels in her cycles and curves. She holds her head up high despite the fact that she is positively gargantuan by Hollywood standards, because she knows that she is beautiful and she loves her body. Well, I'm a size 6, I have E-cup breasts and I own so many sparkly eyeshadows I wouldn't be surprised if I am single-handedly keeping Barry M in business. Am I less "real" than the women in the Dove adverts? It's just another representation of female beauty to which few of us conform, even if the "message" behind it is rather more positive than that of traditional advertisements despite being just a sugar coating for selling us stuff.
There seems to be this assumption that women hate their bodies because of the constant bombardment of unrealistic images thrust at us by Hollywood and the cosmetics industry, and so we all need to learn to love our bodies in order to compensate for it. Fine. But why should I love my body? It's just a body. Men aren't expected to love their bodies. Loving your body makes as little sense as hating it. What we really need, in my opinion, is just to quit being so obsessed with our bodies in the first place.
The reason that loving your body is considered so important is that women's bodies are considered so disproportionately crucial to their worth as human beings. From childhood, women are taught that their self esteem should be tied up in their looks. There's this idea that you can't walk down the street with your head held high if you don't adore every inch of your body. This is bullshit. You don't have to love your body in order to be confident, because you are much more than just your body. I may have the shortest legs in the known universe, but I also have sharp wit, an optimistic disposition, kindness and intelligence. I may have big jugs, but I am also uptight, pedantic and socially inept. I am more than my physical appearance and I refuse to let my self image revolve solely around it.
There's also the uncomfortable truth that it's much easier for some people to love their bodies than others, whether from genuine attractiveness or the extent to which they fit some sort of media 'ideal'. If I do love my body, it's probably because it happens to be relatively close to the 'ideal' plastered all over billboards rather than because I actually have sky-high self esteem. And I realise that in an image-obsessed society in which women are regarded primarily as decoration with their worth measured by how fuckable they are, this makes me extremely lucky.
This pressure to love your body is just that: more pressure, on top of the pressure that women already feel with regards to the way they look. Loving your lardy arse is just as self-absorbed as punishing it with cellulite cream. You are only truly free of the beauty industry and the airbrushed standards it promotes if your lardy arse is not an issue in the first place.
The Campaign for Real Beauty, whilst coming up with some great films, totally skirts the issue. Although 'Love Your Body' is a big step up from 'You Need Cellulite Cream' the issue that would really be helpful for them to push is, 'Your Body Isn't Actually That Important'. But then, that won't help them sell any body lotion.
Barbie Meets Ken - 1961 Barbie manages two years without a boyfriend. Ken seems to have changed quite a lot in appearance since 1961 - he looks positively ancient in comparison to the blond Prince Charming figure that I grew up with.
Color N Curl Barbie 1965
Superstar Barbie 1976 Whatever that girl's on, I want some.
Super Hair Barbie - 1980s "Glamorous" jumpsuit? I beg to differ!
Great Shape Barbie - 1983 This is absolutely revolting. Really, really worrying. Is it any wonder that the girls who were in the target age group in 1983 are now paying extortionate gym memberships and devouring creepy women's magazines instead of carbs? You're looking good, Barbie!
Olympic Skater Barbie The first advert I've come across on YouTube for a Barbie who does anything not directly related to improving her appearance.
Dance Club Barbie
Glitte Hair Barbie - 1994
Teacher Barbie - 1995 A Barbie that does something non-gender specific. Hooray!
Splash & Color Barbie - 1996
Olympic Gymnast Barbie - 1996 1996 was the year that the US gymnastics team won the Atlanta Olympics. Here, Barbie embodies the American Dream...
Barbie Hair Highlights - 2006
Top Model Barbie - 2007
And finally, the whole Barbie theme is subverted in this 90s advertisement for Cool Shaving Ken. Look how ridiculous it seems when the Ken doll is subjected to his own beauty regime...
Something that really strikes me is that in advertisements featuring children playing with the dolls, the children themselves seem to have got older and older. In 1965, they look about six - around the same age as the target audience. In that 2007 commercial they look about fourteen. I wonder what's happening here - if Mattel are trying to expand the age range of their customer base, or if they're going for an even more aspirational theme.
I was never allowed to have Barbies as a child, but boy did I want them. It wasn't just about peer pressure - I wanted a Sega Megadrive and a BMX bike because of peer pressure, but neither of them had quite the same delinquent appeal. I think a lot of the time, particularly with the children of parents who disapprove of this sort of thing, part of the appeal of Barbie is that girls know that there's something a bit naughty about liking something that's just about being pretty. Mattel know damn well that what little girls want is not Nuclear Physicist Barbie, or UN Diplomat Barbie, or Human Rights Lawyer Barbie. What they want is Pop Idol Barbie, Glamour Model Barbie and Botox Barbie. Barbie has always been presented as a vacuous model with an IQ inferior to her waist measurement because that's what consumers want from her.
I think if I have daughters I'll be inclined to let them have Barbie dolls if they want them. I see no real harm in them in the context of a relatively gender-neutral upbringing and besides, banning things just draws attention to them. I think once a child wants a toy, any damage associated with it has already been done. Banning after school television makes much more sense than banning the toys advertised on it.
Seeing that Great Shape Barbie commercial really brings home for me how far we've come in the last twenty years. I really don't think that a commercial such as this would be tolerated now. I'd like to live in a world in which six-year-old girls aren't encouraged to be obsessed with dresses and make up, but I'm glad that I no longer live in a world in which six-year-old girls are encouraged to be obsessed with the circumference of their thighs.
From tapeworm eggs to heart failure, diet pills have always been a fairly controversial subject. But now a new over-the-counter drug has become available in the US, which works in part by punishing users for eating too much fat by making them lose control of their bowels. No, really.
Why is this a feminist issue? Well, because prescription-only diet pills are quite rightly only available to people who are medically overweight. Over-the-counter diet products are aimed at those attempting to lose weight from either a normal or only slightly overweight frame - i.e. women. It's only women who are under pressure to lose weight from an already-healthy physique, and so any over-the-counter or black-market weight loss aid is bound to be aimed mostly at women and to have more female consumers.
Perhaps it's just the fact that I've never actually been fat talking, but I find it incredible to think that any normal-sized person would be so desperate to lose weight. If the only thing standing between you and a chip butty is the prospect of soiling your trousers, then perhaps it's time to break your diet.
