Everybody wants to lose weight

...but which "diet pill" is right for you?




Okay, so I found this very disturbing ad in a recent issue of some garbage pop-star magazine. Why I was reading such a piece of trash is another story, which I'd rather not have on the record.

Anyway, I come across this double page ad. First of all, I generally hate the ads that try to look like articles published by the magazine. And I also wonder if anyone doesn't motice the "Advertisement" typed in tiny font at the top... some people must not.

This ad starts off assuming that "everybody wants to lose weight." This is problematic becuase it's not true, but also becuase it implies that if you don't want to lose weight there is something wrong with you. The last portion of this title/sentence then goes on to imply/assume that everyone wants to lose weight by taking diet pills. I know I just wrote ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifbout what is wrong with our society, but I think I've changed my mind. The addiction to "mircale pills" for all our problems is really what is wrong with our society.

Also, the girl on this page isn't fat. In fact, it just looks like they slightly distorted the picture of a normal and thin girl so she looks a little wider, not fat, just distorted. So here we again see the idea being planted into people's heads that even normal thin people need to lose weight.

The timing of this ad couldn't have been better, either. The feature article of this issue was celebrity cellulite. Now, I have heard of this before. It is actually a common complaint about magazines targeted twoards female audiences; there seems to be more behind the secne deals regarding advertisers only buying space if the magazine will run an article along the same lines. "We are the biggest consumer society on the face of the earth, and advertisers often apply tremendous pressure to the media to adapt content."

Let me just also mention that they use ellipses three times in the first paragraph!

But the creepiest thing of all about this advertisement is that it doesn't say who has paid for it! Read "A buyer's guide to America's best-selling diet pills" to learn more about this disturbing ad.