[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
This Australian advertisement for Weight Watchers (WW) is one of the grossest—and unintentionally revealing—commentaries on the weight loss industry that I have ever seen (which is really saying something):
Text onscreen: "Dedicated to everyone who refused to give up trying." followed by the WW logo.This advertisement is straight-up hateful garbage.
Over tinkly music, there is video of what is meant to be a montage of a thin white brunette woman's life (throughout, the aging representations of this woman are thin, white, and brunette): A baby being born; a toddler swimming in a pool; a young girl on a school bus; a teenage girl kissing a white boy; a young woman running into the water on a beach with a white young man; a woman smashing a plate during a fight with a man; a woman on a date with a man; a woman breastfeeding a child; a middle-aged woman negotiating at work; a middle-aged woman standing in her kitchen looking tired; an older woman seeing a doctor with her older white husband.
Over these clips is a female voiceover saying: "You were incredible from minute one. You refused to give up trying. You survived school. You didn't run from your first kiss. You sought out adventure. You fell out of love; bravely back into it. You said yes to always being there. You stood up for what you believed in. You conquered the impossible daily. You won unwinnable battles."
The video then shows a series of individual people: A young thin white woman; a middle-aged thin black man; a young thin white woman; a thin middle-aged white woman;
Over these clips, the female voiceover says: "These are your stories. Never forget how incredible you are."
Text onscreen: "Awaken YOUR incredible. Weight Watchers."
1. WW has a virtually nonexistent success rate for long-term weight loss. Which means that they make lots and lots of money off of people who "refuse to give up trying," hoping that WW's promised "lifestyle change" (i.e. permanent diet) will work for them this time. WW is deeply invested in promoting the idea that if you fail to lose weight on their program, it's down to your lack of effort, not down to their program being garbage that doesn't work for most people on a long-term basis. They are exploiting fat hating narratives that attribute fatness to laziness, and doing it under the auspices of telling fat people we're "incredible."
2. Every person in this video is thin. There isn't a fat person to be seen. This is because images of thin people are supposed to be aspirational for fat people, and because the weight loss industry is explicitly eliminationist: The stated objective is to get rid of fat people. WW on the one hand tells fat people that they're "incredible," but also erases us from the world. The message is, of course, that fat people are really only incredible once we've lost weight—or at least commit ourselves to trying.
3. Pervasive, intense, aggressive fat hatred stops lots of fat people from being able to survive school, or seeking out romantic relationships, or seeking out adventure. It's particularly cruel to show images of thin people doing these things, that many fat people can't or don't do, because of the hatred directed at us for our bodies, with a voiceover suggesting "you're incredible because you've done these things."
4. The takeaway, naturally, is that: "If you haven't done these things, it's because you're fat. And if you're thin, you'll be able to do all of them!" The constant misattribution of restricted lives to "being fat" instead of "being targeted by incessant fat hatred" is bullshit. And WW knows it's bullshit. But they don't make money if fat people don't feel like we don't deserve to live until we are thin.
5. Fuck you, Weight Watchers. I'm fat and incredible. Precisely because I don't consider those mutually exclusive conditions.
[H/T to Marilyn Wann.]
