I guess Special K hasn’t read our Cheeseburger Rule #8!
Let’s break down this commercial, shall we?
Special K’s Message: “Give your ego a boost. Lose up to a Jean Size!”
Tiffabee’s interpretation: Losing weight will give you the ego boost you are looking for. Losing a jean size can help you love the way you look and give you confidence. You will be happy with yourself and enjoy jean shopping when you finally lose those pesky 10-15 pounds.
Special K’s Message: “Replace two meals with two bowls of Cereal a day plus a sensible snack for two weeks and you could lose up to a jean size.”
Tiffabee’s Interpretation: Eat an unreasonable amount of cereal (that you will most likely get sick of after a few days) for the sake of losing a little weight. It’s worth it if it means being thinner.
Ever since I stopped letting my jean size define me, the Special K challenge has REALLY bugged me! They are not even trying to hide under the guise of “health” for this one. Instead, they are flat out saying, eat our products and you will be thinner. Well, if we are not allowing the size of our jeans to make us feel like better people, special K products (and their message) really don’t apply to us do they?
Plus, what guarantees that you will feel better after you lose a jean size? One of our readers once posted a comment in which she talked about feeling betrayed after she lost a 100 pounds at which point she started obsessing over her “huge” thighs. I know for me, in the past when I have lost a jean size, I only become that much more obsessed with being thin and staying thin. So what can the loss of a jean size really accomplish for us? Does it contribute to “self-esteem” or does it make us that much more fixated on our weight and the shape of our bodies?
Ads like this one totally feed off our culture’s obsession with thin and they contribute to our attachment to the Weight Loss Fantasy. I’m sorry, but the size of your jeans says NOTHING about who you are as a person so why is it so important? Despite what Special K (and everyone else in the dieting industry) says, we are all much more than the numbers on our pants.
Man…that sounds like a sick diet plan to me! 2 bowls of cereal (with milk or dry? whole milk or skim?) to replace 2 meals….what th’.??!
If that doesn’t support and even encourage disordered eating, may piglets fly out of my @ss.
Can our ’sensible snack’ be a laxative?
I will take this moment again to suggest cutting the size labels out of all your clothing. Seriously. I’ve been doing it for a few months now and I really enjoy picking out my dress or skirt and top for the day and not seeing that f*!%ing number or size staring at me. I mean…some days I would be feeling pretty good, but then that stupid XL in the collar of my Tshirt would remind me that I was huge, and therefore inherantly unattractive and unacceptable to the world.
::sigh::
Anyways getting dressed is much more pleasant without those c*cksucking little size tags.
” I know for me, in the past when I have lost a jean size, I only become that much more obsessed with being thin and staying thin. ”
Right on.
Seriously. Life is too freakin’ short to LIVE ON CEREAL to lose however many jean sizes to just become more obsessed with jean sizes.
People always think that being thinner will help them get the relationship, the promotion, the friendships… whatever…
But relationships, promotions and friendships (and whatever else people think weight loss will accomplish) are so much more complex than “okay… you’re thinner? okay… i accept you now.”
If you don’t have self-esteem as a size 14, you won’t have self-esteem at a size 8. Believe it or not, Special K and Weight Watches and Subways and Diet Dr. Pepper listen up real good… self-esteem isn’t a problem that can be fixed by getting into smaller jeans sizes. The obsession just gets bigger… which makes the self-esteem (ironically, but predictably) smaller. But that must just mean that we’re not “good enough” yet, right? Just two more dress sizes… then I’ll be happy…. right?
Ladies (and gentlemen), you are BEAUTIFUL right here and right now. It’s just up to you to accept it and own it. You are worthy of love and friendships and success and everything else that “thin” people are worthy of.
Life is too short to live on puffed f*@#in’ rice, ya know?
How about honoring our bodies, enjoying the experience of REAL FOOD (gasp!) and being proud of our courage to actually experience LIFE… rather than whimper for fear of “fat” behind a shield of styrofoamy diet foods.
If I lost a pants size, my pants wouldn’t fit me! What kind of goal is that? It’s not like going down a shirt size, where conceivably everything would still fit the same except for perhaps my bras. I mean really, buying all new pants is a good thing? What kind of consumption besotted society do we live in?
Don’t go down a pants size, be happy that you’ve got pants that fit you right now.
But godless heathen, they include coupons for discounts on jeans on the boxes (or maybe by mail-in with a set number of UPC labels), dontcha know? That should definitely help offset any hurt feelings you have about the whole thing.
/sarcasm
Godless Heathen, you read my mind. I just went down a pants size (through no strenuous effort of my own – changing climates has done something to my metabolism) and I’m really annoyed that I have to buy all new things. Not only is it a pointless waste of money – my old things were still perfectly good – but now I have to actually try all this crap on again. Not. Fun.
So. Don’t eat cereal ninety-seven times a day, don’t lose a pants size, and spend all the money you save by not buying new clothes on a trip to Europe or something equally fun and un-fluorescently-lit.
Its kind of funny but I actually felt good about a year ago when my jean size went up a size because it gave me a better butt in my pants. A little backwards I guess from Special K.
http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/283/index.jsp
I watched “Super Skinny Me” on BBC America. It involves two reporters who try to get to a size zero in five weeks.
It was painful to see how quickly an eating disorder can catch hold.
One of the reporters had a get-together to see if she could get in those size zero jeans. Even though everyone had discussed how bizarre her thought processes had become during the “experiment”, the air of jealousy was palpable when she paraded around in her new, smaller jeans.
Again, it’s not about health…It’s about fitting in, whether it’s literally or figuratively.