Diet success story? Think again
If you were to look at these two photos with the copy eliminated, what would you think they were depicting?
I saw the photos as part of a magazine ad for a diet product called SmartBurn. But when I first looked at them I only focused on the visuals and thought they were illustrating a sort of Charles Atlas ad in reverse.
Remember? The ones where the skinny weakling was pushed around by big bullies on the beach or the dance floor, and then Atlas helped him build up his body and hold his own against all comers?
In case you don’t, here’s one:
I’m not the best judge of this stuff since I’m a heterosexual woman, but when I looked at the SmartBurn ad all I could see—and all I still can see—is an attractive curvy woman in the first photo, not fat by any means although not absolutely model-perfect, who turns into a poster child for borderline anorexia in the second photo. I understand that anorexics have a distorted body image and would consider this woman’s “after” photo to be far more desirable than her “before” photo, but what’s the ad people’s excuse? Are they purposely appealing to anoxexics, who might be a very lucrative target for their product?
We’re used to seeing ultra-skinny high-fashion models, but this ad was in a very mainstream women’s magazine, nothing extreme. Is this really what most women would consider a success story? If so, I can’t imagine that most men would agree.
The before is fine. As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Most men like curves. I certainly do. To me, actress/model skinny/emaciated is unattractive – unless it is accompanied by healthy muscle tone – which, in my eyes, somewhat mediates the skinniness – due to the healthiness factor. Both mental and physical health is attractive. Emaciated – whether mental or physical – is unattractive.
Actress Marisa Tomei gained at least 20 pounds for a long ago movie: The Perez Family. She said she considered keeping the weight b/c of the way men reacted to her: she had never had so many men be attracted to her and flirt with her. I believe that. She said, in the end, she dieted back down b/c she had to look good in clothing and on camera. I believe that also.
And, now, I revisit my previously expressed (in the comment section) love for a girl with some zaza – Lucy Lawless:
http://news.smartdownloads.net/Entertainment/_Xena__Lucy_Lawless__Rock_Debut-24152941.html
Oh yeah. Real women have curves.
What I find disturbing is that the longer I sit there comparing the two pictures, the easier it becomes for me to see the second picture as more “normal” and the first one as “overweight”. Which I’m sure is what the advertisers are going for.
In college I once roomed with a girl who had a subscription to Elle or Cosmo or one of those other fashion magazines (she got it because a friend of hers was selling them or something). I don’t normally have body-image issues but after looking through one or another of her magazines, I could definitely see how easy it would be to develop them if exposed to a “diet” of images like that.
I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between the two photos. Look close: the bathing suits are worn differently, and the woman’s curves are broken or enhanced by them. A little digital magic later and *poof* instant anorexia.
Patrick: I don’t think that whether it’s done through photoshop or not is the point. The point is that the creators of the ad and the sellers of the product assumed the second photo is of a far more attractive and desirable woman than the first.
I think ten pounds would be proper. Twenty is too much. A thin young woman looks different than a thin, late thirty-ish Desperate Housewife
@gcotharn
Yeah, she looks real good in her may 2008 London concert video on youtube. Nice tight leather chaps, black panties, and halter top.
Hello,
The woman on the right is much better looking than the one on the left.
Most of the difference between the two is the hair style and the smile.
Before/After pictures almost always have the after picture where a nice smile and a nicer hair style. The message is clear, the skinnier girl is better looking, but we (the company) are going to make sure you think so with extras you don’t notice.
Jim
Note that her hipiness is exaggerated in the first photo.It seems she lost all her weight off her hips,tummy and thighs and none off her boobs or arms.She would have had to build up her strength by hard exercise to get that lean.
I was a skinny kid. No Charles Atlas here, just Budweiser.
The smile also helps the second woman look attractive – but the only men looking at the photo ad – aren’t buying the product, just the models’ exposure. The women buying the product have problems they haven’t addressed properly – but America consumes everything for an ideal of beauty, that won’t work without a real smile and a touch.
Switch bathing suits, have #1 smile and voila! she’s the definite winner. No doubt which more men would go for. I even know of men who like their women REALLY big. Believe me, women, there’s a man who likes just your type, trust me.
To put the whole issue into a nutshell: Anna Nicole Smith appeared in Playboy. They never hired Kate Moss. Playboy knows their audience.
runway models are actually more male than female, and are a greek ideal of man. (they are selected by a class of individuals whose taste run where?).
this is an ideal that most women would never be able to reach. the hips are too small, shoulders broad, male jawlines…
I take their pictures when i am not at my day job, and it always amazed me how different people would react to finding that out (or the celebrity work).
the skinny female is actually a feminine ideal, not a masculine one. we have entered the area where there is actually some hard numbers as to what makes beauty.
supermodels are super average. they are not special they are the ideal which is a physical average… (in another way to look at it, we can skew their looks more towards any ideal we may have in mind, so they hit our buttons).
what men look for in women is a certain hip to waist ratio. twiggy and marylin monroe had the same ratio…
most women focus on thin, not ratio. most top womens magazines focus on weight not ratio. most top womens magazines were created to fulfill a political agenda that seeks to direct the attentions of dissatisfied women.
these same magazines sold women out to smoking, and now takes money in pretending to fight the deseases caused by it. remember when they associated liberation with smoking?
i digress… we also like symetry.. the more symetrical your face the more attractive you are.
and then come the things that they airbrush and play with. leg length is one… since its a secondary sexual characteristic… long legs say adult female in proportion to body trunk.
they will increase the size of the pupil in face shots.. like belladona was used.. as its mimicking an involuntary response we have when we see something we like. (how do players know who to focus on more, look in her eyes and her biology will snitch on her. which is why we used to use chapperones, and such).
we also look to hair. long thin shiny healthy hair is another signal of health (which is why feminists made the womens fav styles short and sassy. more male like, and doesnt show a signal to men anymore). shampoo commercials know this one.
clear skin even color is another.. its why women wear stockings, even if they dont know why. (also warmth, and a few other things, but looking better is the main reason).
breasts are not as important as most think.. the focus on them seems to be a bit more of an american fetish as you will not see the focus in magazine versions for other countries.
there are more things.. like youth (fertility is key so youth is key as fertility starts to decline at 25. yes 25. thats another one they dont really want women to know well. which is why there is going to be a heck of a lot of angry women coming up – they have already started writing about them).
the point is that all this is pretty well known but not by the common girl that looks at mags. its known by art directors, ad execs, etc.
so what we are seeing is what ad execs have discovered is a womans ideal of a woman. not a mens idea. want to see a male idea of such, look at playboy. they dont have the proportions of women in womens magazines.
let me explain this the way an ad exec would… (its part of what i have met, and from what i have also read.)
how does marlboro man sell cigarettes? remember that he is the most successful ad figure in history. that image has gotten literally millions of people to hack their way to acclimitization of the smoke and buzz, and consistently stay brand loyal for all their lives… shorter though they may be.
its an association game… the archtypes resonate with us, and they then link the object to that something. the imagry is very powerful and it works subtly.
the ad execs are showing women their archtypical woman. this isnt true of all, as many women, neo for example, have the same ideal as the men so that she would be more successful.
so the ad execs and the people doing business create this altered state of mind by putting on airs. haught coutre.. glamour… etc.. its illusion, smoke, and mirrors… its romance, inttigue, advanture…
its magic clothing and miracle bras.
its supports the fantasy of what the market expects. ladies home journal and more healthy images and things were available. feminist rags wanted unisex, but fashion said “yeah right”, and so feminist rags changes tack and they kind of commisserated to the agenda. the industry is extreemly leftist… (number one group that does stuff for the tops is peoples revolution).
so they are not only using this as a feature and selling point but also as a political tool, and way to generate crisis and causes. which they learned by accident.
give nthe way our society is these magazines and shows become freinds. our brains start to associate that and trust them, and want to know what happens.. be a part of it… most of this fades as one gets older…
the reasons that the mags give for the problem is not the truth. its an opportunity to use the situation to vilify men of some sort. in this case not the designers, but marxs fat cats in advertising, and so forth.
kind of ideological, but it sure aint who is in control. the execs are hired by companies and paid to sell. the models are what people expect as thats what designers use and so have their clothes featured on (so who is choosing the models? not the designers, no that is the job of the stylist or art directors, or combinations).
the magazine owners are to blame as they are also the ones who promote these things, and dont run articles that explain what really works for more than the few (who burlap would work on). they are also the ones that run the articles that deflect the attention from the core of the problems.
the other part of it is the agenda to destroy the family… that leaves children children too long, and it also leaves them without the more solid structures and healthier environments.
all this lack on the kids makes for a set of very shallow, and over focuses young people that have no culture and desperately are trying to pick up what they need to know to be adults, and have no way of getting that.
in the case of many girls they start in tween versions of these womens mags by the same people with politicl agendas, and they nudge the girls towards those goals, while subjecting them more to these images. they know the world of these kids and young adults is more limited than we realize (recent cell phone study shows we dont move around that much), and that they are trying to shape their ways and manners based on their belief that this is an honest world that they are painting.
life is competition, and girls know that good looks can be a ticket to the presumption of a life doing less work, and beind adulated and taken care of… its a form of severe flattery. i am so beautiful that all this falls from providence…
the mags define these model types as what men want, the boys act like this is what they want, the girls know the pay offs, and work sucks…
so its easy to see that out of everyone taking this roller coaster ride, a dcent proportion o fthem would desperately try to change the believed outcome by severe behavior, and not correct information as to what constitutes beauty and how to attract for real relationships (not hookups you hope evolve quickly into them).
its a weird world… but it gets wierder when people have ulterior motives and hidden agendas and they require misery to motivate.
We kinda need “truth”‘s opinion on this thread. I’m curious about what he has to say.
Besides the smile, bathing suit, and hair, there’s also the waist-to-hips ratio. A significant difference is attractive The current obsession with hips being too big is just dumb. Not only are big hips attractive (unless you are selling seats on airliners) but there’s evidence now that big-hipped women give birth to smarter children. And where, please tell me, does the term “broad” come from?
Somewhere i saw a really fat guy wearing a t shirt that said “I Beat Anorexia”…….hehe
ehm, maybe it’s that I’m European, but I’d take the second one in a heart beat whereas the first one would have to have at least a bit of charme…
The lesson for me is that the concept of female attraction can be so easily manipulated and shaped by vogue that no inherent “norm” really exist. See Rubens, for example, compare it with Botticelli or Modigliani and with classic Greece Venera of Milos; and with so-called Neolithical “veneras”, Scythian “veneras”? For me, Botticelli-like type is perfect, but it really matter of taste.
Ms. After looks like she’s served a term in a very chic concentration camp. If I had the choice, Ms. Before would be it in a heartbeat.
And although I only watched “Xena: Warrior Princess” for the scenery, the mythology, and the adult-type dialogue–the fact that Ms. Lawless wore a costume that was not overly encumbering I never noticed–thanks for the link to her more recent picture. It does nothing to disturb my fantasy that I come home one night and there she is on my doorstep, asking if she can come up and get out of these wet clothes.
Let’s assume that the Before is actually 22 lbs heavier (no photoshopping, etc). She appears to be a Pear-type body who stores her fat in her thighs and butt. In the pictures, we really don’t get much of a view of her thighs and none of her butt. I suspect that if the pictures showed before and after from the backside with the focus being butt and thighs, that almost everyone would prefer the After.
I think it varies by person. This person’s face looks better in the thin picture imo.
Other people look great as size a 12. Salma Hayek comes to mind.
Also, some people look good with curves while others end up lumpy / frumpy… and would be better off thin.
Sergey Says: The lesson for me is that the concept of female attraction can be so easily manipulated and shaped by vogue that no inherent “norm” really exist. See Rubens, for example, compare it with Botticelli or Modigliani and with classic Greece Venera of Milos; and with so-called Neolithical “veneras”, Scythian “veneras”? For me, Botticelli-like type is perfect, but it really matter of taste.
Sergey, just because you cant see the pattern, doesn’t mean there isnt one.
Fertility and fertility cues are the pattern…
So.. the norm is fertility cues, not specific fertility cues…
Lets see rubens… if you look at the pictures and project the modern era, or no era and let them stand alone, you would say… hey, fat women were in then. This is the propaganda used to help establish tabula rasa… the point your alluding to.
What indicates health in context with society?
In rubens era a woman who was fat and not married was what? rich and lived without vitamin difficiency. She has enough calories to carry a baby to term and a fat waist so that she doesn’t die in childbirth. This during a time when the birth deaths topped 20%.
Each one of your examples can be shown to exist in the context of whether they had plenty or not.
Today HEALTHY sans secondary indicators is in… one can just select for health, one need not select for health and wealth making a negative like fat be a positive.
Botticelli’s period the wealthy did not starve or have lean times. In fact the people didn’t either like in reubens era. And the greeks were looking for an ideal sans reality… so they didn’t need to include a wealth indicator in their concepts.
Howeer all the fertility cues that are important are in all of them. they are symmetrical, their hips are wide eough for a large brain to pass through. They have enough weight to carry a baby, they have long hair… their looks are symmetric, and so forth.
We ignore all that because we don’t know those are the cues.
And if you don’t know what the pattern is, and don’t see it, it don’t mean that it isnt there.
Its there. once you learn what the cues are, you can then assess their presence.
To assert that no norm exists when you don’t know the points that make up the norm is an interesting concept.. it shows how we as a populace easily accept logical fallacies without being alerted to them if unexamined.
Sans extenuating contextual indicators, we all go for the same things…
In one study hundreds of cultures were studied, and they found more than 200 different points that were equivalent between ALL OF THEM… outside of that there were the few that were different that defined the mass.
We take the 200 of them for granted so we don’t include them in our assements.
After all, in what year was air discovered? You would be very surprised at what was noted before it…
as leftism removes nuance and detail, we lose our ability to assese things. we move to a realm where our knowledge is more incomplete, and yet we have to work as if it was complete. We cant sit and wait till we find out…
howver there is a big difference between the assertions of the main stream media, which is where this tabula rasa argument from the left comes from and has been taken in, and the actual information which everyone is too lazy to look up. so they operate often without remembering where the knowledge came from, and so they assume that its correct.
I would suggest a couple of books to read…
“Survival of the prettiest” http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Prettiest-Science-Nancy-Etcoff/dp/0385479425 and
“the science of beauty” is part of the title and another book too.
One indicator that it’s all the same is that our specied intermarries… another indicator that we are much the same is that plastic surgeons don’t have a race key card for what they will do to make a person prettier. They do the same things… the few things that are race specific are actually minimal and relegated to fashion. So while they may favor a thin nose for the north, or a flat nose for the heat, they all favor a symmetrical one and a smaller one!
There are a lot of sites that now incorporate the findings… but the findings go against leftism/communism/ etc… so we don’t hear much about them… the same way that we arent informed that fertility starts to decline in women at 25… that would blow the ideologues pushing later family life… (which causes tons of problems and why things are really bad).
End of pt 1
By the way… advertising and such is so successful because these are facts…
Other things you will find out is why women have breasts… (because we stand up now, and so it creates the primate attractor on the front. There is a famous picture in which you cant tell that the breasts are the butt, and the butt is the breasts. Size is not related to milk production)
You find out about lip color and what it tells you.. women tend to use darker read lipsticks during certain times in their menses.
And studies show that the more fertile a woman is, the more flesh she shows.
There is really so much out there… and the three groups that know the most are the researchers… the best marketers (not the hoaky ones), and players who study these things for advantage. However the players augment this with other things too. like behavior and body language.
end part 2
[having problems posting as the system gives no error messages… so i am finding the error by posting in sections]
Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty
by Nancy Etcoff
http://www.human-nature.com/nibbs/02/sotp.html
i am trying to post the rest of my post, but it wont go. i have no idea why. its a quote from teh article, and the system is not letting it go through.
i ahve removed the html… removed quotes.. pasted into notepad.. the list goes on on my attempts, but nothing is working. sigh.
heck with this… read paragraph 1 and 2 and imagiine a bold highlight at the point beauty must be a matter, and ends at our minds.
She and other researchers put the nail in the social models coffin… hwoever the social model is the foundation of feminism and feminisms justification that social changes they aremaking will all be good and not lead to harm. However they are aware of this stuff too, or else they wouldn’t hit the misery button so dead on all the time.
“Beauty as Bait” focuses on how humans are born into the world with the ability to discriminate the beautiful. Children, even babies, prefer what adults recognize as beautiful. Research on infants’ perception shows that children as young as three months are staring at attractive faces longer than at unattractive ones. Thus, beauty preferences are not learned; rather, we are born with beauty preferences, or as Etcoff believes “beauty detectors”.
While babies are “rating” adults for attractiveness, adults are doing the same to babies. Infants are helpless and need a huge amount of care. Thus, they had better be adorable and irresistible. Babies have triggers that set off emotions to stimulate adults to care for them and love them. These triggers are called The Kinderschema: soft skin, big eyes, a button nose, soft hair, and all the other features most babies possess. Perhaps because of this, human adults retain a preference for infantile features even in other adults.
This is why Japanese cartoons have this look… and not the thinner eyes that epicanthic folds presence or absence causes.
Its why women when trying to pick up a man or showing interest get this manic wide eye look… trying to open the eyes up… appearing younger (babies eyes are the same size as adults, so the body grows around them).
“Pretty Pleases” depicts the powerful impact beauty has in everyday life. According to Etcoff, beauty influences everything from our perceptions and attitudes to our behavior toward others. This chapter begins with the initial attraction between potential mates. Fertility is basically written on the female body. We know that the peak of fertility is age 20-24. By the end of a woman’s 30’s, her fertility has declined drastically, and by about 50 years of age a woman reaches menopause. However, for men there is no visible sign of a “good sperm carrier”. Most men are able to have children until they die. The difference between the sexes remains the main reason for male preference for women in their teens and twenties. Women on the other hand, don’t seek older men; rather, they prefer a man with signs of resources and one who is willing to invest in her and potential offspring.
. . .
Size Does Matter”, we are shown that in order to attract a female, a male will display his beauty. Just like in other animal species, human males display flashy mental and physical ornaments; however, costs always accompany ornaments. A male who displays his ornaments participates in a form of “handicapping”: he is making it clear that he is healthy enough to maintain his ornaments and is therefore a good candidate for reproduction.
if you analyze this from the view of lesbian feminists you can see why they worked so hard to try to make these things bad!
For instance. A lesbian woman in the prior era could not get a job that paid as high as a man… so she couldn’t buy flashy things that would attract another woman to her… she was put out of the competition..
Meanwhile.. equal pay, and ideological games have made women have bigger tails than peacocks. The peahens have glued male signals to themselves.
And so the women are not willing to be with a man who earns less (they are hypergamous), and the men are not indicating fertility when this happens.
And so the relationship degrades so that she is free to select a ‘better’ mate. feminism blames this process on the men… that way the women don’t give up on the destructive process, but instead assert that it’s the mens fault for behaving wrongly. Bad bad men.
Remember they also deny biology! So anyone accepting this social model has to deny that there is this mating fertility beaty selection thing going on underneath.
If its socially constructed, then all should be fine.. and the men are just socially ill… and they get blamed for the biology they and women cant change!
In other words, like a black man they cant escape their genetics and they are blamed for nto being the new socialist man.
The fashion mags always defining short hair as feminine.. which women believe, but men will say that its not… who is right? The men… not the women telling other women! but women will not listen to men..
So instead they keep listening to this cadre of women (I have worked with personally) and they deny that mens desires and beauty likes are important.
They make the mens desires to be bad because in the absence of biology mens desires are a choice, and to them they are all invalid choices.
This has led to the decimation of the western populace. If they make any of the mistakes they fall off the fertility tree… (heck even the promotion of birth control causes a hormonal change that would make a woman who found her husband witout it dislike him, and a woman who found her husband with it dislike him when she is off of it!) for more on the play of hormones read susan pinkers work.
You can see in the review how impossible it is to change the persons mind from the party line…
Etcoff was successful at depicting the message that beauty is not entirely in the eye of the beholder; however, she was rather unsuccessful at convincing me that our perception of beauty comes solely from something we biologically possess. I found it extremely difficult to accept Etcoff’s ideas that all cultures have the same ideals of beauty regardless of their nationality or race. On the other hand, by using a great deal of scientific research in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, Etcoff was able to convince me that part of our beauty perception may be programmed into our brain circuits and has been throughout the history of humankind. She pulls together recent research on evolutionary topics to back up her suggestion that being attractive has survival value, and this is the reason humans’ reaction to beauty is not completely attributable to conditioning processes of our environment.
The nature nurture argument is a false argument… (its not a proportional division of both in a mix, its 100% both!).
The idea of the argument is to define the adaptability of the brain as the starter state and that its blank…
This is why there is such a hatred of medicine on the left… (for instance, the fight over stem cells was over a reason that would make abortion a social good. once they found another way to make them, the whole argument died out, so it wasn’t about ethics or the things that was the selling points to accept poison)
Etcoffs book though is very thorough…
Etcoff’s ideas were backed up by an astounding amount of evidence. She certainly led me to disavow my belief that images in the media and culture are the sole reasons for our obsession with beauty.
Remember a lot of the stuff that is or was considered the groundwork of tabula rasa has been discredited. Kinsey being a pedophile and having his subjects sexually assaulted to create the basis of child as sexual being (how else did he know what happens when babies are forced to orgasm over and over and describe that in detail?)
And of course Margret meads work is now known to be a sham.
The problem for the left is that the state didn’t change before we started to find out the scams… now it’s a race which is why there is so much urgency… time WAS their friend, now with the net flattening access to information, time is their enemy as things from the past no longer are rare and hidden.
The book was written almost a decadea go, and now there is even a lot more evidence.
Evolutionary psychology was and is the new replacement for what was poisoned before… however the other disciplne still has more political sway… but its dying.. its foundatiosn were corrupted, and so the propagation of falsehood and the inability to have it removed as people with a political interest in it refuse to do so, and refuse to no longer quote it.
In 400 years we would look back and understand this change… but now, we don’t even realize that there is much of a battle going on.
Most haven’t noticed that it’s the philosophers attempting to grab the top position again after the empiracle scientists kicked them off the thrown around gallileos time.
Her breasts got smaller. This makes me sad.
There is a commercial for Nutrisystem which has a woman singing out that she went from a Size 9 to a Size 2. Two! As if there is something obese about a Size 9 woman. My thigh is a Size 2, maybe.
I’m a marathoner and I run with a group of like-minded souls. Interestingly, the single women I run with describe their faster male counterparts as “too skinny” or “not enough muscle”. Their ideal seems to be a fit guy with a buff body. Fat is not good. It signals someone too lazy to look after their bodies.
Of course, when push comes to shove, they marry with their hearts. The spouses range from fellow runners to workaholics averse to exercise.
Oh, before I took up running, at age 52, I was double the male equivalent of picture #1. 40 lbs later, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in.
When I look at fat people, I say, there I was, but, by an act of my will, I’m not there anymore. Becoming a marathoner was a lot easier than quitting smoking. Been there, done that.
Uh Pat, I assume you actually liked running (and suffering) before you started marathons. Not everyone finds the prospect of a marathon fun, or even sane.
Congrats on losing weight, but it is not nearly as easy as you portray.