For the love of all that is holy, have some of these instead.
Just in case y’all need another timely reminder of how the Food Industrial Complex loves to use harmful body-image stereotypes to shill products to women, check out Pepsi’s new “Skinny” can:“In celebration of beautiful, confident women, Diet Pepsi presents the taller, sassier new Skinny Can.”
According to Diet Pepsi: skinny = beautiful, confident, taller and sassier. Not surprisingly, this gimmick promotes Diet Pepsi at New York Fashion Week—Big Fashion’s festive week-long celebration of unattainable body types and blithely ignored eating disorders.
But as dismal and obviously sizeist as the Skinny Pepsi campaign is, it’s is nothing new. Big Food—and the soulless advertisers that do its bidding—have been on a real tear with this kind of marketing. It’s crossed the line into truly misogynist and pro-ana territory.
Last year, PhDork wrote about Campbell’s Soup’s campaign trumpeting the fact that some of their soups have only 80 calories a serving—a meal about as filling as a cup of apple juice. Unsurprisingly, the advertising featured women, not men; men get the sales pitch for Campbell’s Chunky Soups instead. C’mon, you know they’d never shill something called “chunky” to women.
But if you’re still hungry after your 80-calorie soup, Kellogg’s wants to sell you their Chocolatey Delight Special K cereal: These crunchy rice and wheat flakes (and oh-so-yummy chocolatey pieces) are the perfect way to get your chocolatey fix without undoing your day.
Right. Because women are on a perpetual diet, and their whole day would be positively undone by eating anything made of genuine chocolate.
Similarly, Yoplait markets their Yoplait Light yogurt in flavors like Pineapple Upsidedown Cake and Strawberry Shortcake as the diet-y alternative to dessert. Check out their TV ad—it’s amazing how much insecurity-prodding and dieting propaganda they managed to pack into 20 seconds.
Big Food and its advertisers trot out the usual “Ooh, this is healthy and will make you fit and skinny” cover story, but concern-trolling about a woman’s health is merely part of the marketing. It’s especially ridiculous in light of the fact that those yogurts and chocolatey cereal are created in labs from over-processed grains and lots of added starch, sugars, artificial flavors and sweeteners. They’re not healthy. They’re hardly even food.
But, of course, these products are meant make women feel as though they aren’t eating dessert. Women shouldn’t eat dessert, the thinking goes. Women don’t deserve to eat dessert. We should give up the pleasure of real, delicious food for a diet of virtuous self-deprivation eating artificial overprocessed crap instead.
The “guilt-free dessert” marketing ploy reaches its absolute nadir with Extra Dessert Delights sugarfree gum: Inspired by real desserts, Extra Dessert Delights comes in mouth-watering Mint Chocolate Chip, Strawberry Shortcake and Key Lime Pie flavors, to help satisfy sweet cravings for only 5 calories per stick.
Yes, gum—gum!—is being sold as dessert.
Not only is gum not dessert, gum is not food. You don’t even swallow it! Unfortunately, I suspect the marketing geniuses at Wrigley’s think that is precisely the allure of Dessert Delights. It’s eating dessert without actually eating! I couldn’t find a on-line video of the TV commercials for it, but needless to say, they all feature women enthusing over how decadent and delicious this non-food, non-dessert is.
How much does Big Food hate women? How low will they stoop to sell us unhealthy “food” by piling on the harmful stereotypes and sick body-image propaganda?
Y’all feel free to contemplate that one at your leisure. I’m going to go over to PhDork’s house and stick my face into one of her homemade pies.
“Right. Because women are on a perpetual diet, and their whole day would be positively undone by eating anything that was made of genuine chocolate.”
I don’t know about you guys, but I ALWAYS have to cry in a cold shower after eating cookie dough.
My immediate thought is that this is inept marketing justifying a bid for increased profits through the following two mechanisms: 1) the top and bottom of soda cans are thicker and therefore reducing the ratio of top+bottom:sides reduces their manufacturing costs and 2) since people are notoriously bad at being able to tell the same volume in different aspect ratio containers of the same shape, they can charge a different (probably higher) price/ounce even though these cans will have the same volume as their traditionally-shaped ones.
To sustain our bodies we need food. Food has calories. Guar-gum-thickened, splenda-sweetened, artificial flavored things in little plastic cups are not food. You cannot eat to take care of yourself without eating food. To eat not-food is to starve.
Intellectually, I know this. Deep down, I still don’t always get it, after a lifetime of body-hating propaganda. Worse than the media are the women around me who I respect and admire who buy into this shit and feed it to me. I have a food blog and cook awesome things almost every day, but still now and then I forget what food is and can’t bring myself to eat. It sucks.
What’s funny is that I went to my local dessert shop (Baked Expectations) and having a HUGE slice of strawberry cheesecake and cheese toast tonight. I felt it was necessary after reading about the skinny can. That kind of marketing does that.
I’ll never understand how “foods” aimed at women are mostly not food, just chemicals bound together to taste like real food, but with less calories.
Food marketed at men has extra salt and fat, but has other actual food ingredients like cheese, meat, etc.
How is half the population supposed to survive on “foods” such as dessert flavored yogurt and gum?!
When I saw those soup ads about the 80 calorie serving of soup I was like WTF? If I have an 80 calorie bowl of soup I would like a grilled cheese sandwich on the side!
This whole non-food thing bleeds into EVERYTHING in women’s lives. I just had my first pre-natal appointment for my third pregnancy and I still had to listen to the lecture about food and what I could/couldn’t and should/should not eat. Within the information pack I received there was a list of ‘If you’re craving this – you should eat this instead!’ It was just ridiculous. Most of the suggestions for ‘instead’ weren’t even really related to what you actually ‘craved’ they were just low-fat low-calorie snacks instead. Aren’t pregnant women supposed to eat high quality fats to, you know, grow the fetus’ brain?
I refuse to eat fake foods. I think it’s bad for my children’s bodies and brains. It’s actually one of the few problems I have with visiting my in-laws. My mother-in-law only stocks the house with non-food.
@MA, I had that exact same thought. I’m going to get a piece of a yummy pannacotta cake.
This kind of thing gives me *such* rage. I was going to make cupcakes today anyway, I’m making a double batch now. And some of them might be angry: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lebatihem/5018169713/in/set-72157623587979826/
Are you saying theres NO foods though that appeal more to women than men? Probably not, I wish we lived in an advertising free world.
Absolutely agree with you. Why do I need carbonated water with sweet syrup to drink anyways – especially when it’s flavored with halogenated hydrocarbons?? Yuck.
One of my biggest irks is how anything marketed to women, from meal replacement shakes to chewable vitamins, is chocolate flavored. I don’t actually like chocolate much at all (which is apparently not allow if one is female based on the responses I’ve gotten) and yet I can’t find stuff with no flavor or a non-chocolate/vanilla flavor at all. *sigh*
I would like a calcium chew that doesn’t taste like fake dessert. They don’t taste like real dessert anyways – like we’re so dumb we don’t realize this tastes horrible on top of it??
And, a friend on FB is talking about that gum and how awesome it is. *headdesk*
@Joe: The question isn’t whether there are some foods that appeal to women. The question is, can the food industry market them to women without making it about being avoiding indulgence, being on a diet, and whether the food will make them fat. You sure as hell don’t see food marketed to men that way—even if it’s the exact same food (there are men who eat Campbell’s soup and Diet Pepsi, of course, but those companies don’t sell them to men with sales pitches about how the foods are low in calories or “skinny”).
A familiar rant, I was complaining about this yesterday. *sigh*
What’s crazy is it not only sets up women to starve or replace food with less food, it also is a system that sets them up to “cheat”, “binge”, “splurge” etc. So at best, women can be “bad” with replacement non-food i.e. you’re supposed to be dieting all the time, counting points, diet everything, tone-tone-tone, but you know you’re gonna want that other shit like a drug so here you go, it’s o.k. now! now keep buying diet stuff. Round and round we go!
Ugh. Why does food need to be one extreme or the other. If I get pulled into one more female coworkers’ 24-7-365 Lean Cuisine/Weight Watchers/Gym Masochism diet conversation …inbetween their “I cheated, I skipped the gym went to McDonald’s today, mmmm grease! yum yum” admissions…I’m gonna go off. They’ll alternate rounding each other up for diet food and the gym, and alternating recruiting each other quote unquote to be “bad” that day. No lifestyle changes made for health reasons (preventing stroke or diabetes), just yo-yo dieting and extreme options to get ‘skinny’.
Food is food. I say it til I’m blue in the face, and I’m have had to help out friends with eating disorders so this is personal too. Food isn’t the best friend or the enemy, it’s food.
Also, if I try to say something even vaguely in the direction of fat being a feminist issue, or about focusing on specific health goals instead of weight, I get blown off as “oh you’re skinny, you’re just like that, lucky you!” i.e. genetics so I should shut up. But then if the same person is having convo about eating healthy I mention about vegan food not having cholesterol, being good for dealing with Type 2 diabetes etc, then I get “Oh you’re skinny because you eat rabbit food, lucky you, I could never do it!” So either way it’s better to continue with some form of binging and purging vs stopping everything like that, or changing your lifestyle.
I get a lot of assumption that I went vegan as a diet, which is really offensive on an ethical level (I don’t give a crap about celebrity diet fads…Atkins, Zone, any of it. I’m not vegan because of a celebrity endorsing it.) And whether someone knows I’m vegan or not, I get all these fake compliments that end up being more disturbing or even bitter than anything else: “You’re so thin! I wish I was so skinny! I can barely see you! Just like a model!”
Then I have to reply something awkwardly, usually changing the subject. Sometimes I say it’s not important. I don’t like that it’s usually a cue for this self-debasement women learn young “Oh I’m so fat!” “No, you look great, so skinny, I’m so fat!” “Oh no, you look great, you’ve been on a new diet, tell me all about it!”
It’s like as women we can’t be proud of ourselves for anything other than our bodies.
This was a rather long rant but seriously, this drives me nuts. I don’t have any easy answers. I just know it depresses and angers me that we do this to ourselves and others and that men reinforce it. There’s a reason I stopped having magazine subscriptions years ago. At least my mom taught me to snark on TV ads MST3K-style, that helps.
@veganmarcy I was sucked into too many of those conversations at previous jobs. It probably doesn’t help that I was working in a female-dominated field and seeing the work fridge crammed with Diet Coke (it’s the only acceptable soda because it has no calories), yogurt, and salads was a daily occurrence. Also, I get some of the same flack for being a vegetarian. I was thinking about writing a post about it. Some of the most critical comments are from other women, as you’ve noted.
Okay, back to this post. Pepsi’s slogan fills with me rage. I hope I don’t see this in office fridges anytime soon.
Joe, do you think any of these foods would appeal to women if women were not terrified of gaining weight?
I can’t imagine anyone would choose cake-flavored runny yogurt over actual cake in the absence of fat-phobia.
@SarahMC: I can’t imagine anyone would choose cake-flavored runny yogurt over actual cake in the absence of fat-phobia.
Word. That shit is nasty. I love yogurt, but Yoplait Light Fat-Shaming Faux-Dessert Yogurt doesn’t even taste good. It fails on every level.
@foureleven – sounds like a good post. I’ve heard the same rant from other veg*n female friends who happen to be thinner. (And the ones who aren’t get the awful reaction of “so it’s a new diet?” or “i though veg*ns were skinny?” which is pretty hulksmash inducing, gotta say.)
And I can guarantee you these new Pepsis will show up in my office fridge next to the Cokes Zeros. Most of the pop* is like that. Weirdly enough pop is free where I work but you have to PAY to be in the coffee and/or water ‘clubs’. I’m in the (filtered) water club because I like hydrating my body for some strange reason, and need to drink tea every waking minute.
*aka soda
also, I saw this Janeane Garofalo clip again last night about “you gotta take that cake with you, i mean it!” and it reminds me of this comment thread:
http://comedians.jokes.com/janeane-garofalo/videos/janeane-garofalo—stairmaster-hell
Quite apart from the body-hating, fat-shaming bullshit: how does a mass-produced can “celebrate” anything? What does that even mean?
Awww, look, this box of 400 toothpicks celebrates the rainforest! Whaddaya mean ‘how’? IT JUST DOES. BUY THEM.
I hate these diet food commercials. Have you ever had the misfortune to witness one of the Truvia commercials? They’re truly rage inducing if you listen to the words. My husband hits mute or changes the channel whenever they come on. I went so far as to write them but when my rant didn’t meet their word limit and I couldn’t make it fit while retaining my meaning I just gave up. I should try again. Splenda might be altered sugar but most of their ads (in the beginning at least) were just kind of trippy. Truvia’s ads have a cutesy little ditty about how sugar made your butt fat. Argh.
Its ridiculous, I think, because it’s not even about nutrition. Most of the “low-calorie” stuff being put out is not even GOOD for you. Maybe my athletic training makes me more in tune to this stuff, but jeez. I’d gladly eat a high-calorie meal if I knew that it was full of minerals, or vitamins, or other good stuff. I wish if low-calorie stuff was gonna be out there, then they’d at least stop cloaking it in good health propoganda. When did the calorie become the end all be be of nutritional units?
Drahill: when “fat” became the worstest thing that one (mostly female ones) could be.
The irony is: if you focus on nutrition (minerals, vitamins, nutrients), you’re much more likely to gravitate towards your particular “healthy” weight, which has fuck-all to do with being skinny.
And whats terrible is that the concept of “fat” has become ever so expansive. Any weight other than skin and bone is now judged to be fat. Myself, and mostly all of the women I train with, are regarded as “fat.” The irony is that, because we’re athletes, almost all the extra bulk is muscle. I’m 5’10, am I’m 180 pounds. I work out with girls who are in excess of 200 pounds. And they’re walls of muscle. But because we have “bulk” on us, the bulk immediately translates us into “fat people.”
I’m not trying to imply that muscular people are in any superior position to anyone. It’s very sad that one’s “bulk”, whatever the hell its made up of, is now a matter of public consumption. And it sucks. There’s only one way to be.
VaS: the Truvia commercials are the worst! The woman’s singing voice, the terribly strained rhymes, and of course the fatsteria.
Dessert’s on me tonight, y’all! (If only…)
Maybe Big Food should stop loading our food with unnecessary salt and bad fat before trying to convince us that we’re not eating right. Going to the grocery store feels like a battle between you and the food industry. Why on earth should a whole grain cereal contain more than 200 mg of salt?
@Es – I love the cupcakes! Angry cupcakes are angry!
Ugh. It’s definitely getting worse. Soon we’ll all have to go vegetarian just have any hope in hell of knowing what we’re eating.
Fortunately, my office is all women, and we’ve collectively declared war right back on the food industry. We eat real food (healthy and fatty), keep chocolate behind the counter, and the only Diet Coke in the fridge is Karen’s because she likes the taste (and even she thinks that’s weird).
Joe, do you think any of these foods would appeal to women if women were not terrified of gaining weight?
So really, there are no foods that appeal just to one gender or another are there? Nothing women like that men don’t. Sort of makes that whole branch of advertisement targetting seem foolish.
Let’s not bash the Diet Coke too hard y’all. I love it, much much more than is good for me.
I too would love a veg*n post. On that note – I only had a tiny break in which to get food last night, and decided to go to McDonald’s, figuring that they must have a veggie option. But it turns out that the spicy vegetable wrap? Not suitable for vegetarians. (I had to pester the cashier to give me nutritional information so I could check, as she was content to say, ‘as far as I know it’s vegetarian’ with a cheeky smile). So I found a cafe and got a panini instead, which was a better option anyway. And McDonald’s will continue to not get my custom.
@Joe: Congratulations. You finally got the point of the whole discussion.
Thankyou Mackey! Yesterday’s mutant cupcake became a Dali clock… http://www.flickr.com/photos/lebatihem/5436203061/
@Joe: Congratulations. You finally got the point of the whole discussion.
Thanks. I can see through a wall if you give me a week.
@Es – if I had the $s to give you I would love to be a silent partner in a cake shop called “Mutant Cupcakes”.. The Dali inspired one is fantastic!!!1!!!
[...] ♣ I’m just starting to pay more attention to weird stuff in my food, so this was an interesting read. Attention, Women: Big Food Hates You [...]
[...] just as Big Food markets non-food diet foods to women, here’s Big Fashion marketing a get-fit fitness shoe which scientific studies have shown [...]
[...] Ok returning to the title subject- I am just going to brainstorm and pull out products off the top of my head that target women’s body issues: most yogurts, special k, lean cuisine, weight watchers, smart ones cookies, slim fast, I’m sure this list could grow and grow. It is sad and frustrating that there is a whole industry of food products built upon women’s insecurities. Why can’t food be androgenous? Why does it have to be male or female? Why do men get to gorge on whatever they want and women have to limit themselves to low-calorie nibble-sized portions? Fortunately I am not the only one making note of this trend: http://www.harpyness.com/2011/02/09/attention-women-big-food-hates-you/ [...]