By T Abbatemarco
For much of my life, I have wondered: Why is it that so many of the advertisements I see about diet programs and products star a woman as its model? Why do so many diet products specifically target women? For a time, these questions slipped from my head, until I saw a product labeled “Skinny Girl Popcorn” in my pantry.
Unassuming at first, “Skinny Girl Popcorn” was something that I couldn’t get out of my head. Skinny Girl’s marketing is insulting. The direct selling point of their product is not only predatory, but also teaches girls that being a skinny girl is the standard, showcasing a discriminatory marketing practice. Why is something so blatantly sexist allowed to exist? Why do we set the standard that being a Skinny Girl is the goal? I was left wondering about all the other products preying on women and their insecurities, products with a simple tagline that manage to seemingly uplift its consumers. Aside from the obvious question of if diet advertising disproportionately targets women, how exactly does diet culture contribute to an already sexist society?
I was shocked to find a majority of the advertisements had women as the focal point of the ad. I knew that it would be disproportionate, but I didn’t realize or truly understand the weight of how many advertisements this applied to. Many of the advertisements I looked at, through Youtube.com and ispot.tv typically featured women as the main subjects of the 30-second segments. It was also difficult to find diet product and program advertisements where the subject was only men; it was either men and women, animated, or solely women.
I’d like to focus on a couple of advertisements in particular, these being major health corporations’ campaigns such as: Ensure’s “Nutrition in Change”, Goli’s “Jennifer Lopez x Goli Nutrition (Part 1)”, and Orgain’s “Real Nutrition for Real Life.” These ads showcased the predatory nature of diet advertising.
First, let’s look at “Nutrition in Change”, a commercial starring a group of animated food objects in a fridge, both healthy and unhealthy, with our star of the show at the focal point: a bottle of Ensure. In summary, the heroic Ensure bottle kicks the unhealthy foods out, claiming that “she”–the woman featured in the commercial–shouldn’t be eating them, and instead should opt for healthier options. Throughout the animated ad, the advertisers felt that they should subtly target women by having the only character in the commercial be a woman, despite her costars being personified food items. This shows a purposeful targeting towards women, essentially saying: Hey women! You should be eating healthier! You should live up to a beauty standard that the industry has set for you!
Another egregious advertisement, “Jennifer Lopez x Goli Nutrition (Part 1),” stars acclaimed actress and singer Jennifer Lopez, hinting that Goli provides her with much of the support she needs in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Goli isn’t the reason Lopez looks the way she does, and her role as a spokesperson for this product conveys the idea that if other women take Goli, they could look like her.
Lastly, let’s look at “Real Nutrition in Real Life,” which stars both men and women. The women, however, are only seen in tight fitting athletic wear, while the men are wearing baggier items of clothing such as basketball shorts. The advertisement hones in on the bottoms of the women, emphasizing a feature that is often targeted on women. Out of the three men in this commercial, versus the eight women, only one of the men have their butt shown in all its glory, while all of the women have theirs highlighted.
The advertisement claims to focus on protein and wellness. The nicknames for the women, however, seem to focus mainly on their bottoms, including “Bubble Butt Bobby” and “Tara the Tush.”
Diet culture and self-image is also exacerbated by the influence of celebrities and public figures, who are often at the forefront of this advertising. This includes celebrities such as Jessica Simpson, American Idol star Jennifer Hudson, and Marie Hudson.
These celebrities have endorsed programs like Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, and the Jenny Craig program. Celebrity endorsements like this are a double edged sword: on one hand, it makes a product seem more trustworthy since the people endorsing it are well known public figures, but on the other hand, consumers don’t know if the long term results of the programs or products they advertise are actually impacted by the programs themselves. Celebrities have access to many resources the average person does not, so these programs may not be the sole reason for their bodies.
Weight Watchers, established in 1963, has a stark emphasis on its point system, allowing a certain amount of points per week. While offering flexibility in what people can eat as long as it’s under the amount of points allotted, the focus on points can lead its participants to skip meals to save points, and can feel restrictive. Weight Watchers is a subscription based service, meaning that the help they claim to want to provide as an accessible option comes at a literal price. This further contributes to an already constricting idea of an “ideal” body image for people in general, while also perpetuating an almost impossible beauty standard set for women.
Additionally, Jenny Craig has been built on tearing women down, making them feel like they aren’t attractive because they don’t live up to the standard of what we as a society have deemed beauty to be, they are notorious for their advertisements being mainly centered around women, in 2011 five of their six spokespeople were women, according to “When Dieting Becomes a Role to Play.”
“Jenny Craig made me worry about my weight. Now the company’s gone – but skinny culture remains,” Alaina Demopoulos points out in an article for The Guardian. “Advertisements that did not feature former television stars were even more confessional: ‘real women’ shared their stories of humiliation at seeing their bodies in family photos, or struggling to fit into a wedding dress […] Fatness was seen as failure.”
Goli, established in 2019, focuses their efforts into advertising through influencers, creating a feeling of relatability in their audience. Looking on TikTok, I found that a majority of Goli’s advertisers were women. Out of 30 videos, 17 were from female content creators, five were from male content creators, and the rest were faceless advertisements. Even though these are all sponsored videos, the brand still reached out to an overwhelming amount of women compared to men.
I grew up during the 2000’s and 2010’s when thinness was seen as something to achieve and maintain, through healthy or unhealthy means. Thinness in women has always been valued above everything else. I’ve experienced it throughout my entire life, including my childhood, and I’m sure that those of you reading this have experienced or witnessed it as well. Although diet products and programs claim to include everyone – which I don’t necessarily believe to be untrue – I quickly learned that this “everyone” are the insecure women who have been made to feel like their weight equates to their value as a person.
Just because society says you need to look a certain way doesn’t mean that you need to. You do not need to fit into any box or mold established over the course of hundreds of years, created by an already existing sexist society. One that has been built off of the idea that while yes, technically, you can achieve anything you set your mind too, it really helps if you fit within the beauty standard that has been set.