Apparently during Edwardian times (1900-1910-ish), thin was definitely not in – in fact, if you were skinny you were seen as pitiable and sickly, frail and mildly repellent. The cure? Why, a revitalizing vacation in the countryside! You’d go to the seaside, right, and stay in a fancy hotel where you’d basically eat and swim (but not too vigorously) and put on lots of lovely pounds, and come back and everybody would admire and pet you and comment on how healthy you looked. Gawd, I was born out of time.
Sidenote: where are all the other SodaCrazies? Mark, what’s going on here? I mean, the silliness will continue until morale improves.
Yeah, I seem to remember people being a little more enthusiastic about the idea at conception…
But, I have to say: I love the travel ads. It’s not even a “meet you halfway” kind of thing. It’s more like “Choose one: anorexia or morbid obesity.”
Still, the modern Dove campaigns seem like a nice start, don’t they? Though I had an odd thought about one of more recent ones which had a group of very healthy, diverse women showing off their un-airbrushed bodies in underwear, laughing and hugging each other. It looked sweet and chummy… and I couldn’t help but think what the popular reaction would be if that same ad featured men instead.
It’s funny, that double standard – you can slap a man’s rear during a basketball game and it’s fine (in fact, it happens about 250 times a game, and more during playoffs), but if you try it in a bar you’ll get creamed. (And which way you’ll get creamed depends on what kind of bar you tried it in. Zing!)
And a group of healthy and diverse women hugging and laughing is empowering, and celebrates the strength and integrity of the female bond… whereas the same group of men, well, that’s just plain old gay and couldn’t possibly celebrate anything. Society is so thrillingly strange sometimes.