Protein World "beach body" adverts

[RunkyJam]

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.

"Amour de soi" I love it shovetheholly thanks for the great post.

If only we/advertisers/media i.e. everyone could start promoting Amour de soi as standard.

Look, I don't particularly like how women are portrayed in the media in general.

My point is simple. These people are selling a fitness based slimming product. The model reflects that. Just Like a plus size model reflects what vans are trying to achieve in their sales campaigns.

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

Shove you seem to have missed the end of that statment, would you care to enlighten me...I am blind...or...what exactly.

What I am is someone who does not agree with you. All advertising is aspirational based. The advert is saying 'you COULD look like this'. Whether you want to, have the time to put into looking like that doesn't matter. It isn't saying you should look like this, its say you can. Most women could look similar to this if they chose to eat right 99% of the time, spent a lot of time in the gym and chugged these products. Although I do believe the food and gym is likely to do infinite amounts more than the products.

The advert is no different to weight watchers, special k, slim fast, cambridge diets.

The CIF adverts show women who look fairly glam for someone doing housework with huge gorgeous kitchens. My kitchen isn't like that, nor am I as glam as the women in the advert. This does not make me feel inferior. When I was 20 stone, i didn't feel inferior. I felt shit about my body because I was unhealthy and unhappy. Not because Kate Moss was skinny and I wasn't.

And yes fit people get body shamed. The whole men who are body builders must be thick theory which I hear alot in rl and on mn is an appalling one. And no one thinks of body shaming me, because I have fairly large arms. Its seen as completely ok to tell women they are too muscley

Totally agree with you shewept.
Ads are idealised and misleading.
Even Evans has attractive, glamourous models with nice hair and make up. Presumably reinforcing the idea that it's ok for women to be plus sized, but they should be attractive and glamourous with nice hair and make up or they should remove ourselves from the public realm if they aren't?

shewpt I completely agree. The woman in the picture looks identical to most of the hard core protein taking gym goers in my gym, I wish I looked like them but it's never happening. I've got the shoulders of a swimmer and the legs of a prop. .

It's a fitness model, maximuscle use similar women as do many athletic sports wear brands, nothing new or worth getting my knickers in a twist about.

and fitshaming is the new thing now.

Interesting thread. The problem I have with the petition in the OP is that this is indeed an advert for a slimming/fitness product. So to advertise this product they need to show a slim/fit person....that their product works. They do this for both the male and female version of the advert so there is clearly no gender bias.

I can see the problem with the wording though. Can I ask, if the wording was 'This stuff will make you look like her' would there be a problem?

Yes ads tend to be idealised and misleading, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't question a particular ideal, where it comes from and what it does to people. If you think "meh, well of course she looks like that, she's idealised" you're failing to see that the question is why THAT ideal. Why does the "ideal" for women have to be, generally, very thin, toned, white, often blonde and with no fat, but big tits? This is not only very unusual, and very hard for most women to ever become like, but may not even actually be healthy except for a few people. Many women held up as ideal/attractive - models and film stars etc. – are underweight and not well, as shovetheholly's post described.

If you think "oh well of course that's the ideal, of course anyone would like to look like that on the beach and of course a diet pill company will use that as their image" - you've internalised the idea that that's what a perfect and healthy woman should look like and what we all want to look like.

Many, many perfectly normal and healthy women loathe their own bodies. This is a big part of why – not this ad, on its own, but this phenomenon and the way so many of us internalise it and perpetuate it. It's really important to ask why, where it came from and what it says about how women are seen in general.

Feminists sometimes try to break this type of message down and see what it is really saying to women:

Women: be smaller, take up less space.

No matter how hard you try, you'll probably never be good enough.

But you must keep trying and divert your attention and funds to the effort to look thinner, more "attractive" (as defined by this image) and more acceptable to society, on the beach/wherever.

If you don't fit this image, you should feel bad about yourself. You're ugly and looking at you will offend people.

If you don't fit this image, people will be within their rights to sneer at and abuse you for your failure.

If you do, you'll be praised for meeting accepted standards of attractiveness and your actual achievements won't matter.

I'm not suggesting the ad company set out to say this, it's the patriarchal society that this is a product of that says this to women. The net result is that women suffer and are held back – THAT's why it's important. Not because I want to be Ms Outraged of Munsnet about one little old ad. Because the whole situation matters.

Ah Buffy come in come in! That's enough break, you are needed here! :o

Hi I've namechanged again (Voyager/Magenta whathaveyou)

Well Buffy, you have answered me earlier points. That in fact if the woman on the poster was larger, the poster would be ok. So saying that women this lean, shouldn't show their body in case it upsets someone.

Because people here can't seem to decide, whether its the body or the message they are offended by.

Actually, the fitness industry is actively trying to encourage women to be larger and build muscle. To move away from low calorie diets, to eat more be strong and take up more space. They are trying to encourage women to move in to the weights room, which used to be seen as a male space. Protein World are a fitness company. This girl isn't a waif she is strong and healthy.

Personally I think advertising as whole needs looking at. Mascara adverts that have used cgi and false lashes infuriates me, ridiculous I know.

But to me there is nothing wrong with this advert I actually think it's an improvement on the kate moss Calvin Klein style ads.

on another note I am not trying to change anyone's mind, I am having a discussion. I don't think we will all ever agree. And that's fine. We don't have to.

i really, really don't care about what the model herself looks like. it's the "are you beach body ready" that is the problem - that message that there are things a woman should be doing before she should be seen wearing a bikini on a beach. whether that's being thinner, fitter, larger breasts, smaller breasts, larger bottom, smaller bottom, muscular, six-pack, concave stomach, more toned, whatever. any message that reinforces this idea that beyond turning up on a beach, there are expectations of what a woman should be doing to prepare for an appearance in a swimming costume in public. aurochs has explained the problem very well.

but it's a question Are you beach body ready? so you either are or you are not. it's a personal desicion if you feel ready to reveal yourself in a swimming costume yet. The girl on the poster feels she is, the same way I'd be happy to go to a beach in my current form. some women will say well no not yet want to be a size 10 before I shove my arse in a bikini thanks.

I'm still not seeing the issue with the athletic model for a protein company, or a question.

next it will be "just do it" just do what?!?! Nike is telling me to do things I don't want to do....

I felt beach body ready at a size 24.

I felt beach body ready at a size 14.

I felt beach body ready at a size 10.

Buffy I think you are saying that. You are saying that because she has a unusual (although its not unusual) body shape she can't be on a poster.

I find the facebook comments along the lines of "this advert doesn't have any effect on me..." as it may not be personally but it is reinforcing a patriarchal belief on female beauty.

Buffy - I haven't thought about this enough, but here goes.

I think women DO say horrible things to thinner women. I've experienced it myself. It is often done as something that appropriates the male gaze in a very odd way, e.g. (this is a real example I've had) 'Look at you, you're so thin, you look like a boy. Real men like curves'. I think I see this as simple false consciousness born of precisely the kind of insecurity that these adverts seek to inculcate: women have been socially conditioned by mass media to compete with one another and put one another down, rather than forging more collective, supportive relationships. (Though thankfully, some of us can think for ourselves and build those positive relationships in spite of it). So I see this as more evidence of the way that amour propre (to use Rousseau again) is being deliberately cultivated by advertisers, and then adopted by women themselves in a way that does not conduce to solidarity. Divide and rule! And, of course, it isn't OK for women to do this.

However, as shasta perceptively said a page or so ago - there is an asymmetry in the power dynamics of fat and thin within our culture which means that they cannot be treated as one and the same. Culturally, an entire multi-billion dollar industry has devoted itself over the last 100 years or so to telling women that thin is synonymous with healthy, sexy, fulfilled, self-controlled, feminine and (bizarrely) rich; fat with laziness, greed, unattractiveness and a lack of self control. And that's not just messaging: it's lived experience. I have a friend who is very large due to a medical condition, and the abuse that she gets on a daily basis, the assumptions that are made about her, the discrimination that she faces make the occasional negative comment I have had as a thin person pale into significance. (Arguments to the contrary remind me of those racist arguments that say 'White people should be able to use the n word', ignoring the huge importance of context and position in power relations in determining meaning).

FWIW, I don't think this model is being 'fit shamed', at least not by anyone here. That sounds very much like the kind of rubbish PR agencies come out with to defend a bad campaign (I should know, I used to work for one). I think the exploitative, sexist use of her image to belittle women and cultivate insecurity is being questioned, not her personal appearance. I would strongly object to any comment that was derogatory to her appearance, because I am against the objectification of women in that way. For that very reason, I am against this poster.

I'd agree Buffy. I think there needs to be more education on healthy living, the science of exercise and nutrition. I think the increase in obesity and the normalising of it is very damaging. I don't think society should go down the same route as they have done with smokers, but should definitely encourage education. There are too many overweight people these days and I think it's only going to get worse.
Hopefully, education will help at the other end of the range. People will be healthy thin, if they choose to be.

Great posts shovetheholly.

shewept On the ProteinWorld poster itself it says The Weight Loss Collection on the side.

King You are equating thin with healthy. Thin can be healthy yes. Someone can also be slightly bigger and healthy. Im a size 14 I was a 28 I worked bloody hard to achieve this. Im a lot healthier than i was.

My size 6/8 friend though is in hospital after having had a heart attack. Over the course of last year she was constantly posting selfies on fb to show how slim she had got. She drinks and smokes heavily. So just because someone looks slim doesnt mean they are healthy. And the same can be said of someone bigger. They could be healthy or unhealthy. People are individuals. They are not one big homogenous mass.

"There are too many overweight people around these days" Sorry but i think this comment here has given you away.