Every year in January the networks are glutted with new commercials of celebrities endorsing weight loss programs and products. It’s been years since I’ve made the decision to stop using dieting and food deprivation to control my eating. And for the most part I’ve been able to turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the majority of these ads, but somehow Jennifer Hudson’s Weight Watchers’® commercial slipped past my internal censors and it really fired up all the reasons why I want to encourage you to avoid dieting at all costs.
http://thejuicywoman.blogs.com/my_weblog/2012/01/results-not-typical-celebrity-weight-loss.html
Every year in January the networks are glutted with new commercials of celebrities endorsing weight loss programs and products. It’s been years since I’ve made the decision to stop using dieting and food deprivation to control my eating. And for the most part I’ve been able to turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the majority of these ads, but somehow Jennifer Hudson’s Weight Watchers’® commercial slipped past my internal censors.
Before Jennifer Hudson vs. After Jennifer Hudson
I suspect it’s been re-edited since I first viewed it, (perhaps to be a bit less in-your-face offensive) but it still conveys the same point–Sad Before vs. Empowered After. When I first watched the ad, I immediately read Jennifer’s body language and saw how it spoke volumes of her discomfort with her body and her general state of uncertainty as she begins to sing the song, “I Believe In You and Me.”
Then from behind her, the Jennifer today image takes the stage and gives her former heavier self a glimmer of a nasty look and goes on to steal the show, leaving the younger heavier Jennifer looking unpolished and a bit silly. It was that fleeting look of superiority that made me fume.
Well it was that and the other commercial she did for Weight Watchers®. Just imagine this–a commercial where Oscar winning actress/singer Jennifer basically discounts all of her accomplishments prior to Weight Watchers® as being nothing. Yes. Nothing. She said that before she lost weight she was living in a world of can’ts. (Funny–it was my understanding that she was an amazingly accomplished woman who also happened to be working steadily on getting healthier and making great progress on her own for years before Weight Watchers® ever came into the picture offering her an endorsement deal last April.)
Diets reinforce a negative self -image
It’s this blatant misrepresentation and exploitation of Ms. Hudson on Weight Watchers’® part that makes my blood boil. Believing that Weight Watchers® or any other diet program is the only way to get control of their eating, gain confidence and be proud of themselves is what keeps so many women going back to dieting time and time again, seeking validation from everyone else except themselves. “What’s wrong with this picture?” Where are our role models for self acceptance? Why aren’t these celebrities who are doing these endorsements all taking part in the Love Your Body Day campaign and helping our kids to believe in themselves?
The point is no matter what creative editing Weight Watchers® is or isn’t doing, our diet lovin’ society has brainwashed women and girls into thinking that we are nothing unless we have captured and maintained hold of the brass ring of thinness.
How do these negative messages affect our kids’ self esteem?
But at what cost? What is this value system of thin at any price and beauty for sale teaching our children? The numbers of young girls struggling with eating disorders and body image issues is staggering. Experts say that approximately 1 – 2 out of every 100 kids will develop an eating disorder. Several years ago, as a Brownie Girl Scout leader I was shocked to overhear a group of 8 year old girls in my troop discussing the state of their bodies and relenting about eating too much. I soon found out that the source of their discontent came from their mothers.
Today in my continuing work with at-risk teen girls in the self esteem programs I provide in the local schools, I often hear girls’ tearful stories explaining the connection between their damaged self esteem and their fractured families. It’s their inability to deal with the stress in their lives and the peer pressure they face that pushes them to turn to drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, and cutting (deliberately self-harming themselves by cutting their arms and legs and any other easily covered area with razors, bobby pins, hair clips, the edge of makeup mirrors and any other object that can pierce their skin).
Most young children just want to be just like their mom. So if mom has hang-ups about her body, struggles with feelings of entitlement around her sexuality, allows others to talk down to her and push her around, feels pressured to lose weight or change herself to please others, obsesses about what she eats and criticizes her body, and treats herself poorly then her child will soon learn to do the same.
Having been on both sides of the mother-daughter coin, I know this to be true. At 10, I was pushed into dieting and becoming obsessed about my thighs by well-meaning but ignorant adults.
Then when I became a mom, I started to make the same mistakes with my son, talking down to him, drawing his attention to his excess weight, depriving him of foods he loved, dragging him with me to my Weight Watchers® meetings, kids’ nutrition groups and pressing and pushing and forcing him to weigh-in each day and account for everything he put in his mouth. Through it all I never once gave him the message that he would be okay just the way he was.
In my diet-crazed mind, I failed to consider how my hypocritical role modeling and my own unhealthy relationship with food and my body was diminishing my son’s self-esteem, making him a very unhappy and unhealthy little boy. To this day it has caused a rift in our relationship and I curse the moment I ever began the cycle of weight obsession in our home.
You may argue and think that because your child hasn’t had such painful experiences, they won’t fall between the cracks and lose their sense of self. But it happens. It starts with your child seeing you losing a piece of yourself, and struggling to become whole by changing who you are. That’s what dieting does.
Andrea Amador, The Juicy Woman, Weight Watchers, Jennifer Hudson, Results Not Typical, emotional eating, eating disorders,