Anti-Obesity TV Spots Called “Shame” Ads
Sunday, October 7, 2012Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota has sparked a ton of controversy over some TV ads that are deemed negative “shame” ads. The nonprofit health insurer ran the following ads.
Here’s an NPR spot about the ads and the ensuing attacks on Blue Cross for standing behind the controversial ads. While I think the ad falls drastically short of targeting the real problem – which is the government-special interest health and wellness paradigm – I think the ad certainly points toward the notion of accountability, even if the ad falls short on everything else.
There is also an article in The Atlantic that notes the controversy this ad has stirred up among those who are easily offended, or desire to be offended in the defense of others. The blogger Jezebel has raged on this issue on her blog, with her takeaway being “she’s a problem.”
You have the gall to make generalizations about my life because, in your eyes, I superficially resemble a massive, diverse swath of the population whose lives you’ve also deigned to generalize? Whose complex, painful, messy, joyous lives you’ve boiled down to, “Har har too many Cheetos”? Please.
…It would be possible to make a commercial calling for more accountability and transparency in food production and food marketing—the way that corporations and agribusiness feed people poison and call it nutrition. It would be possible to create healthy food that the poorest Americans can afford. All of this is possible.
…The truth is that we live in a country where the system of food production is colossally fucked. There is a systematic campaign to trick people into eating garbage because garbage is cheap to produce. There are whole communities who either can’t afford or physically can’t access fresh, healthy ingredients.
I quoted excerpts from Jezebel because, even though the third paragraph starts inching closer to the truth, she becomes irrational, instead choosing to defend her own healthy fatness. That is where some of her logical points get lost in her annoying self-defense tirade. In spite of the food propaganda that is shoved down our throats on a daily basis and sold as gospel, there is an accountability factor at the individual level for opting out of the Cheetos and sugar addiction mentality, and seeking knowledge to influence self-improvement and a move away from the collective (anti)health establishment. Jezebel is right that “fatness” itself is not the problem – it is a symptom of the larger problem of an epidemic of chronic disease in modern America. Plenty of fat people are healthy whereas folks who are “not fat” are visibly inflamed and battling chronic health problems they have come to normalize as “it’s just me.”
There was a similar controversy in Georgia when ads were run by Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. This is a visually compelling ad, but again, watching the ad closing reveals to me that the mother is too brainwashed by the conventional myths and purposeful lies of the establishment to properly answer the question, “Mom, why am I fat?”
jeannie queenie says:
October 7th, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Can’t help but feel that part of the “Mom, why am I fat” scene is because kids no longer play outside. With so many moms working outside the house to bolster the BS statist system via paying more taxes, these women can’t be two places at one time. Hence, kids are on their own and will do the easier/lazier thing.
Which today is picking up the remote/tv or gaming online or sitting at a computer, but move the body, ya really think? And they get all kinds of clues from the adults around them…the so called adults might go to gyms, waste time and gas money to do so, while leaving a filthy house behind…and for no money at all, they could everyday do some very strenuous chore and, have a clean house and a great body.
Kids are so coddled now they hardly help at home.And for ages, the moms feel so guilty about not being at home, that they coddle kids/buy the latest tech crap which aids in keeping kids fat along with parents.
Moms could keep those kids busy and their bodies moving each day in keeping a house clean, doing laundry, some prep work in the kitchen, scrubbing floors, doing windows, vacuuming or walking to the grocery store to pick up a few items. Not to mention there is always grass to be cut, weeds to be picked, shrubs to be trimmed, cars to be washed, insides to be vaccumed, and garages to be cleaned, but no,not today, as that might put a wee bit of pressure on the poor kids. Then again, I see adults all around me who fit that description as well!
It is all so tiring…all the talk about getting exercise when in fact 1,000 reasons exist to get exercise each and every day just in sheer maintenance of one’s domain. So why waste gasoline and time if you can do the same for free at home. As for equipment, it costs little to none to have weights of various sizes at home, stretch bands, or using your own body for resistance exercises. No equipment needed for yoga, or pilates or running up and down stairs..or stretching with one leg up on a kitchen island. I do have a couple pieces of equipment at home…a rower and a gravity rider, but rarely use them…call me a lazy exerciser, but it seems to me that the most important things we do should not have to entail hugh amounts of time/energy/gas to do. And of course, simply walking is never out of style, albeit the shoes have to be replaced about every 500 miles. But back to the kids, all the wrong people are having kids today…usually the ones who refuse to be responsible. How sad is it for those kids born into such families where they see mom and dad both working outside the home, coming home and either picking up fast food or frozen food, but then when you think about it,what is really decent food anymore?
It is no longer like it was in the fifties, when the air was still clean, fish weren’t filled with mercury, all beef wasn’t subjected to being ammonia washed in restaurants, oceans didn’t have major oil spills, frogs weren’t growing only 3 legs..Round up didn’t saturate everything you chewed at meals….you get the picture.
Face it, the world we live in today is the product of peoples who decided that greed/ego/following the crowd and caving to PE demands of more consumption and creating false needs has more than contributed to the miserable state of affairs surrounding us today..
David Smith says:
October 8th, 2012 at 10:30 am
To go a little further with what Jeannie Queenie posted (Gotta be careful about good-ol’-days talk!), my dad and both sets of grandparents (and so on back), didn’t worry about working out; they were small farmers here in the rural South. Back then, of course, more people died or were crippled by diseases like polio, typhoid and yellow fever (the infamous “Yellow Jack” that decimated large numbers in the summertime in cities like New Orleans and Memphis), etc. However, their food was good and fresh, including all that “horrible”, fatty bacon, ham, lard, fresh cream, butter, and milk that they produced from their own livestock. Then there was all the fresh produce that they ate, the surplus going to their self-sufficient surrounding communities. Oh yes, they even got away with an occasional chaw or pipe bowl of tobacco, again, probably from their own small patch they grew as a “cash crop”. I know, not everybody can or should be a farmer, but so much of the lifestyle most of us are living is artificially maintained by cheap money, oil, etc. At some point it’s all going to come tumbling down for the pyramid scheme that it is.
I may have noted this before, but when my family went through the Depression here in rural TN, they had little money, but folks were on their land still, they and their communities able to feed themselves from the produce. What’s going to happen when the major “downturn” hits? Folks have either voluntarily, or through a combination of farm subsidies, re-zoning/taxation, or eminent domain, been pushed off of the land. Not only is there now acre upon acre of Big Ag subsidized monoculture corn (or converted into ugly subdivisions to maintain the new industy base “for the good of the community”), etc., the land is now in the hands of ever fewer. I’d further say we’ve mistaken material affluence, seemingly infinite choice in amusements and entertainment, and “equality” of the sexes for freedom. In fact we’ve largely traded any true freedom for an ever increasing and chimerical pursuit of abstractions – again, like equality – severing ourselves from reality (including the health of our bodies, our families, our communities, etc.). “At least I’m not a drudge like my grandparents working on the farm!” No, you’re just a drudge for the Industrial and political elites whose power and lifestyles you help to maintain, working ever longer hours away from home for an ever devalued dollar. How free are you? Apologies for this rambling rant! I hope it makes some sense!
Tommy Udo says:
October 8th, 2012 at 3:41 pm
Sorry, jeannie, I was around in the ’50s, and you could cut the smog into blocks with a chainsaw and build stuff with it. The air is much cleaner today.