America’s Next Top Anorexic

We live in the age of glorified beauty. This applies to everything, not just advertising. My friend recently wrote a blog post to raise skin cancer awareness and it included a few anecdotes about how beauty has been glorified—not just by the media (I know how quick we are to blame the media)—by societal standards. Why do girls go tanning? Because “bronze is beautiful.” Even if it causes a potentially fatal disease.

And now, so is anorexia, apparently. New Zealand’s TV3 is has begun their promotion of popular show, “America’s Next Top Model,” and with it, comes their “Through the cracks” campaign. The campaign, done by BBDO Colenso, consists of models literally having fallen through the cracks because they are so skinny.  They add a bit of cutesy taste to each one with the small dogs trying to save their way-too-skinny owners.

I will admit. The dogs are cute. In real life, they’re a bit annoying, but nevertheless, small dogs are adorable to look at. It still doesn’t negate the fact that the ads are promoting the fact that models are so skinny they can fall through the cracks. It mimics the ads done by other agencies in the past decade for Pepsi Light, Slimfast, among others (also depicted below).

I think we all know by now how skinny models have to be. They act as living, walking, barely talking clothes hangers. I’m not bashing the modeling industry, I think it’s a profession in the entertainment industry just like any other. But to promote a show that is supposedly all about outer and inner beauty with ads that promote being so skinny you fall through the cracks?

Perhaps I am missing some sort of satire or mockery ANTM was trying to make about their own industry. Perhaps there was supposed to be a hint of sarcasm in there. I’d like to think I’m an intelligent human being who understands satire or sarcasm when she sees it. And I definitely didn’t see it here. Just like the adage, “Bronze is beautiful,” is so trendy these days, the obsession with being skinny has caught on to be more than just an epidemic.

We say we aren’t a superficial culture at all, we promote that beauty comes from within. But what we say and how we react to people are two completely different things. We still value the stick-thin over the slightly-chunky. We love our ridiculous carb-free diets while we work out absurd amounts of hours everyday at the gym.

Sure, let’s promote that so we have even more people going on stupid diets and starving themselves. Go America.

Advertisement