Melissa over at Shakesville posted an entry yesterday about a Brazilian yogurt ad that featured three larger women in sexy poses from movies (one was the famous Marilyn Monroe pose) but communicated the message that these women will never meet men’s preferences unless they eat that yogurt and get rid of that weight. Yes, it’s more of that heteronormative fatphobic stuff, and yes, even these models got airbrushed.
Lots of folks on my livejournal friends list pointed out that those women were damned attractive (yes, I thought they looked good too), and lots of the early commenters on the Shakesville entry were as appreciative. Unfortunately, as comment threads often do, you get some later folks that had to chime in with their chorus of fatphobic things to say (like concern trollish cries of “unhealthy!”).
I give Shakesville some mad props for adding Kate Harding of Shapely Prose to their cadre of bloggers, and I’ve also started following Junkfood Science. Body Impolitic is another must-read.
One Comment
I just apported here from another post around the fatosphere, and we have a lot in common interests. Same name, the love of sci-fi and fat activism.
I do keep the one and only fat activism Brazilian blog and, and since you mentioned that ridiculous yogurt ad, let me tell you this.
If you think that was bad, you should see some other stuff that goes down in Brazil.
There is a gym club called Cia.Atletica that has been publishing horrific fatophobic material for years and was getting away with it until the “geniuses”decided to launch a “viral” campaign on YouTube, with a little video prank, in which actors impersonating law enforcement officers were stopping fat people in the streets and issuing them fake “tickets” for unauthorized public placement of advertising space. In other words, comparing fat people to clandestine walking billboards.
And with that they finally bit the dust, because there was a massive movement against it, they had to delete the posted video.