Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Our biggest dreams as women … are to be smaller

Have you seen these Weight Watchers commercials?

Pint-size cuties wax rhapsodic about their exuberant and fanciful dreams:

"When I grow up, I'm going to go to the moon … and then we can float to school."


"When I grow up, I want to float around in my big pink bubble … or use my magic wand to make rainbows fall from the sky."


Other kids profess their joyous plans to be a dolphin tamer, swim with mermaids, and live in a bouncy castle.

As the ad continues: "Remember when you thought anything was possible? It still is."

Yes, as the smiling grown-up ladies swinging on rope swings, tootling on basketed bikes, and bouncing on trampolines assure us … anything is possible to us now as adults.

Assuming that the only thing we want now is to lose weight.

Yep, the whole dolphin-castle-magic-wand things didn't come true, but rejoice, ladies, you can still be smaller than you currently are!

I find these ads unutterably sad.

Remember those simpler times, when we dreamed big dreams and enjoyed our bodies and ourselves? Well, now we can fortunately instead all be at war with our bodies and hate them for being whatever they are.

I might not get to swim with mermaids, but by golly, I get to (pointlessly) starve myself! Just so I can gain it all back and once again be a target for these ads.

How sweet. Don't anyone tell those girls what's in their future. Let them enjoy childhood awhile longer.

Our biggest dreams as women … are to be smaller == Hobo Mama

6 comments:

... said...
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Party of 5 said...

Funny...when I saw this commercial the first time, I was not ready for it to be a weight-watcher's commercial. Thank you for posting this!

Tree Peters said...

I haven't seen those.. we tend to skip the commercials, but oh my gosh! I'm with you...
What a bleak future for our dreams.
Love the photo of you by the way!

Issa Waters said...

OMG those commercials are horrible. Way to ruin... everything. Ugh. On another note, that photo of you is straight up awesome!

Hamsa V. said...

So good to know that someone else hates that commercial! When I was growing up in the
60s & 70s I watched my Mom struggle with Weight Watchers, trying so hard to be satisfied
with carrot stick snacks, counting every damn calorie, managing to lose maybe 8 pounds &
watching them creep so predictably back, often bringing a few "friends". I didn't realize then,
(and neither did Mom!), that she was an emotional eater. The deprivation diets of the 60s, 70s &
80s taught her to hate her own body. They never helped her to heal her hurts-how could they?-
& instead reinforced her shame that she lacked enough "will power" to ignore her hunger pangs & shrink to the size & shape the magazines prescribed.

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