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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Protein World "beach body" adverts

447 replies

RunkyJam · 22/04/2015 16:24

Anyone else raging about these?

I've complained to the ASA and just signed a petition taking off over at change.org

www.change.org/p/proteinworld-arjun-seth-remove-are-you-beach-body-ready-advertisements

Absolutely BONKERS this was approved IMO.

OP posts:
shewept · 29/04/2015 11:08

Yes of course, someone writes a poor article for the guardian. End of discussion.

I don't thnk it sums up the thread at all.

INickedAName · 29/04/2015 11:09

Amethyst thank you for that link :)

Amethyst24 · 29/04/2015 11:53

It's a bit ridiculous to accuse me of trying to shut down argument, shewept, when I've been making the same points over and over again on this thread for the past week.

scallopsrgreat · 29/04/2015 11:57

I never said it was OK shewept. I said the structural imbalance wasn't the way you describe it.

And of course the advert is telling you how you should look. They are saying this is what a beach body looks like. What else are they saying? When a plus size woman models they are saying this is what a plus size woman can look like.

But when you are looking at yet another image of a young, tall, slim, pretty, white model it adds to the systematic promotion of a narrow definition of how women should look. I'm not sure why you don't think that is significant. Do you think it doesn't actually happen? Or it's just a coincidence that advert companies/Page 3/media images of women/actresses have so many images of women that fit that criteria?

Just because it happens to men sometimes doesn't make it OK or doesn't mean that the bombardment of images isn't happening to women.

Amethyst24 · 29/04/2015 12:00

You've got it all wrong, scallops. They're saying you should feel confident. They're not selling weight loss products AT ALL. Wink

mamapants · 29/04/2015 12:01

That article is completely daft.
Of course women (people) can be shamed for all kinds of reasons.
People are shamed and criticised for being thin all the time. Women are shamed for being muscular. Women are shamed for buying into beauty ideals and for not buying into them. For having large breasts and for having small breasts.

mamapants · 29/04/2015 12:03

While I agree that different representations of beauty should appear in the media I still don't see why a health supplement slimming product company is going to advertise it's product with anything but a slim woman, it is what they are advertising afterall.

scallopsrgreat · 29/04/2015 12:03

You are right mamapants, it really doesn't take a lot to shame women about their bodies. It happens all the time. In the hundreds of women's mags, men's mags, newspapers, in sports.

Women are their viewed as a sum of their bodies or what they look like. That is objectification. That is what I'm objecting to.

scallopsrgreat · 29/04/2015 12:08

"I still don't see why a health supplement slimming product company is going to advertise it's product with anything but a slim woman, it is what they are advertising afterall." Well yes they are. Along with all the other images of women doing the same thing.

IF this image was just one of a whole variety of images for women or dietary products etc were aimed equally at men and women for health benefits rather than body image benefits then I think you'd be right.

shaska · 29/04/2015 12:10

People are made to feel shit for all kinds of things it's true.

The difference is in the specific versus the wider cultural norms, the pressures applied, and who is applying the pressure.

It's a bit like when people use the example of the one black man they know who says awful things about white people to say that 'racism works both ways'.

There is a massive difference between an ingrained and pervasive system designed to put down people of colour over hundreds and hundreds of years, and one shitty attitude.

Just as there is a massive difference between some dick telling a thin girl to 'eat a sandwich' and the fact that women have eg been told for decades that to be chubby is to be undesirable, and in fact often, quite disgusting.

Neither example is ok, but they are not at all the same thing.

scallopsrgreat · 29/04/2015 12:12

Yy shashka

shovetheholly · 29/04/2015 12:17

I don't agree this image is telling anyone how they should look.

If you honestly can't see that this is exactly what it's doing then you are either willfully blind or....

mamapants · 29/04/2015 12:21

Well I actually think that being thin has only just become socially acceptable in maybe the last ten years. Certainly when I was in school the general consensus was that thin was bad- the words used were skinny, skin and bone, flat chested, no meat, men like curves, men like something to hold on to blah blah blah. In fact I was told only last year in work in an office full of people that their cat had more meat on them than I did.
I don't see any shaming as being less important Because it's less frequent. And I would say that maybe media images might tell us every day that being thin is better but

GwendolynMoon · 29/04/2015 12:33

Following this 'debate' on twitter a bit and even though I wouldn't say the original advert/s necessarily struck me as the worst example of how women are portrayed in the media/objectified etc (although I completely agree that they are an example of a wider issue with regards to this) but the portrayal of people who have issues with it as hysterical leftist/feminazis/radfems who are just jealous of 'gorgeous, fit women' has just infuriated me. Angry

As has the smug arrogance of Protein World's CEO Arjun Seth (ref. his twitter feed).

HapShawl · 29/04/2015 12:33

an excellent response, if it hasn't been posted here already

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/protein-world-beach-body-adverts-only-prove-body-shaming-feminist-issue

shaska · 29/04/2015 12:34

"In fact I was told only last year in work in an office full of people that their cat had more meat on them than I did. "

Look, I've had stuff like that said to me as well. I also get a lot of the more passive aggressive version which is the head-tilt and 'how do you stay so slim you must eat like a bird' and then trying to force burgers down me or whatever.

I do not for a second think that that compares to how someone who has been, let's say, a size 14 since puberty must feel given the messages they receive, day in, day out, without them even wanting to see them, about what 'attractive' looks like.

That's if you want to be specific about it. If that makes it clearer.

scallopsrgreat · 29/04/2015 12:37

The fact that Protein World's twitter feed is full of misogyny really shows the place that they are coming from.

Jobless123 · 29/04/2015 12:41

Apparently people are going to protest in Hyde Park. What absolute idiots.

mamapants · 29/04/2015 12:44

Sorry shaska my point wasn't that it is the same thing but more that super thin being the ideal is a recentish phenomenon and that body shaming of all sorts is prevalent in response to the stupid piece by the guardian acting as though fit or thin people are never shamed.

INickedAName · 29/04/2015 12:48

Showed my 10 year old dd the ad yesterday and asked what she thought the message was, her thoughts were

"Look at this girl, she has a good body, use these weight loss collection items if you want a body like hers because people will look at you on the beach."

She thinks it's a wrong message and that replacing meals with tablets/shakes isn't a good idea. That people can go to the beach however they look and if someone stares at them, for being fat or thin, they should "keep their beak out" and just enjoy the beach.

shaska · 29/04/2015 12:52

Well mamapants I guess we just have to agree to disagree

shovetheholly · 29/04/2015 12:55

Well said shaska

I also think that there is exploitation at the level of production as well as consumption in many of these images (obviously I can't talk about this one, I wasn't there). I used to be a model doing national campaigns in the 90s, when 'heroin chic' was all the rage. The way that girls - I wasn't even 15 when I started - are treated on shoots is often appalling. The messages that are delivered to them about what makes them worthwhile are hideous. The way that they are spoken to, touched, manipulated by some photographers and directors would (I would like to think) shock most mothers. I accepted it because it was what I knew. And because it paid money, more money than I could possibly ever earn doing anything else, and my parents needed that.

I was actually anorexic and ill at the time. I am a healthy weight now, but I have had several 'dips' into underweight unhealthiness since, the most recent in my early 30s. Depressingly, I always get many more compliments and much more attention when I'm really unhealthy than when I'm actually OK. I suspect many women who have been different weights can identify with that. This is the battle we still have to fight, and it is a battle to own ourselves.

Despite of the fact that I have been to uni for eight years, achieved a PhD with a gender focus to it, and practice feminism and solidarity and support for all women I come into contact with, I still find it hard to escape this messaging at the back of my mind. And I do not think I am alone - I think most of us that are around my age, in their 30s, struggle with decades of really awful, sexist messaging that we are not worthwhile if we don't look good; that we should remove ourselves from the public realm if we aren't a size 8; that we owe it to those who view us to please their eye.

Rousseau said that there were two kinds of self-love. Amour de soi is a healthy kind: it is self-care that comes from a wellspring of knowing what you want and what makes you happy. Amour propre is a bad and unhealthy kind that comes from competition, from viewing yourself through the eyes of others and trying to make them admire you and envy you. It's essentially a giving-away of your selfhood, a placing of yourself in the power of others. To me, this poster promotes amour propre, not amour de soi: it encourages women to see themselves through the eyes of others, not on their own terms. The whole central message is visual: if you do not look like this, you do not belong in public space in a bikini because you will offend the gaze of others.

Compare it to This Girl Can, which is a much healthier way of encouraging women to look after themselves, for themselves.

HapShawl · 29/04/2015 13:03

great post shovetheholly

shaska · 29/04/2015 13:04

shove - Totally agree with everything in that post. Love the Rousseau stuff, that's an amazing way to put it.