New ad doubles as fashion mag dumping ground
The war on thin models is playing out on the streets of Toronto. A new streetcar shelter ad from NEDIC, the National Eating Disorder Information Centre, is getting its message across with help from fashion magazines.
At the corner of Queen and Soho, the words “Shed your weight problem here” appear on a bright fuchsia box with a slot through which women can dump their lady mags, which have come under increasing fire in recent months for glorifying ultra-skinny body types. We wonder if there is a male-targeted version of this with discarded copies of GQ and Men’s Health. After all, it’s not just women who are held up to unrealistic (and potentially unhealthy) beauty standards.
So far, the pile is composed of crisp, obviously unread copies of Elle, Marie Claire and Seventeen that NEDIC probably dumped to get the pile started, but it’ll be interesting to see if regular people ditch their beloved glossies or just use the ad as a receptacle for empty Starbucks cups and copies of Metro.
sure, it works on “some” level, but let’s be “real.” yes, a magazine has some influence on society and how women perceive themselves, but they are not entirely to blame. people need to take responsibility for themselves and for their own personal actions. we can “choose” to follow the weight trend of impossibly thin models who happened to be “blessed” with “superior” genetics, or we can choose to use our own personal arsenal and look how we are “supposed” to look. i think it’s a cop-out to hold magazines and thin girls hostage for the choices that society makes en masse. yes, we are impressionable and yes we are susceptible, but not ALL women want to be thin and emaciated. generally speaking there are more “healthier” looking women than gaunt women, it really depends on where you look, how you look, and why you’re looking. the end.
Just received the latest issue of Fashion Magazine — you know, the one they send you when you subscribe to Toronto Life at public events even though you expressly asked them not to — and damned if it wouldn’t have made a perfect addition to this little interactive advertising dumpster (had I not tossed if after a 15-second flip-through), loaded as it is with page after page of Photoshopped collages of unbearably scrawny, flat-chested, utterly curveless and emaciated models from most of the world’s runways (this being “The Trend Issue” don’t you know). Just disgusting and extremely unsettling to look at, and FASHION reinforces the putridity of the models by deliberately designing the pages into long, thin, overlapping shards. Ugh!
Obviously I can’t give kudos to Toronto Life for highlighting the NEDIC display when a sister magazine like FASHION, which I never asked for, never read, and find thoroughly vacuous and representative of everything that’s wrong with the presentation of women’s bodies in the world today, is prime fodder for such an installation. Perhaps I’ll see if my latest copy is still in the blue box, where it landed less than a minute after it slid through my mail slot, and drop it off on my next trip downtown. Then I’ll happily admire all the normal looking women walking the streets and realize that the majority, thankfully, don’t succumb to these impossible trends, even if the pressure is all around them thanks to magazines like FASHION.
At this point, with over half of Canadians overweight or obese isn’t this just a waste of time? It’s not PC to say, “You’re endangering your health by being fat!” but it’s okay to say “Skinny Photoshopped girls in magazines cause anorexia and/or women to feel bad about their weight.” But guess what:
1-We ALL know these models are Photoshopped–I’ve told my 6-year-old daughter that for crying out loud!
2-Fat people should feel bad about being fat! They’re shortening their lives and by passing on their lifestyle habits, are endangering their kids’ health too!
3-Anorexia is a terrible disease but it’s far less prevalent than obesity. Further, magazines may covey an unrealistic body image but not everyone who reads fashion mags is anorexic–sexual abuse, family strife, perfectionism/obsessive-compulsive tendencies all also play a factor.
I’m NOT skinny nor do I have a stereotypically idealized figure, but I work out 4 days a week and am proud of getting healthy after years of being un-fit. People should think of ways to make themselves feel better about themselves in a healthy way, rather than making themselves feel better by bashing magazines. Dude: that’s not going to stop you from getting Type 2 diabetes.
Magazines are market-driven. If non-photoshopped models sold more copies, they’d stop. Just buy a mag more in line with your values int he first place!
What happens when the box fills up more than halfway? The ‘Shed your weight problem here’ message will be covered up and the whole point of the ad will be obscured…
perfumy dla ciebie
@Stokely Cat, you can go on and on about the obesity epidemic all you want, but that ISN’T the issue and spinning it that way just makes it look like you’re avoiding the whole problem.
‘Fat people should feel bad about being fat! They’re shortening their lives and by passing on their lifestyle habits, are endangering their kids’ health too!’
Oh, so it’s PERFECTLY acceptable to ‘fat-shame’ people who are overweight because ‘it’s SOOO unhealthy’. Last I checked, that sort of attitude has contributed to many of these same overweight girls and women engaging in DANGEROUS BEHAVIORS to make themselves loose weight, which results in destroying their bodies ANYWAY which DEFEATS THE PURPOSE.
Newsflash: overweight people KNOW THEY ARE OVERWEIGHT. What purpose is served by calling attention to it?
If your child bullied another child who was overweight and made them feel ashamed of their appearance, would that be okay?? Who are YOU to pretend that you have any right to judge people who are overweight??? Kids get bullied all the about their weight and making excuses like you are as a reason to devalue and degrade people who have weight issues doesn’t help, either. And don’t say you’re not, because that is EXACTLY what you’re doing and the reasons you give are all weak excuses that people make to justify their prejudices.
So people who fall into what YOU see as ‘overweight’ and are happy with themselves are horrible people??? I call that having a healthy body image of yourself. You CAN be ‘overweight’ and be healthy, BTW.
While fashion magazines may not be the entire problem, they ARE a contributor. It doesn’t MATTER if you know it’s photoshopped. Doesn’t change the fact that the image projects to young girls and women what they are ‘supposed’ to look like and THOSE certainly don’t help the obesity epidemic, either. In fact, they make it WORSE.