Why??
The beautiful people of The Butterfly Foundation, Australia drew attention to a new advertising campaign by the company Sumo Salad.
In what I guess is a mock campaign of the Anti-Smoking ads put on cigarette packets, they have talked about the benefits of Sumo Salad in staving off ‘moobs’, ‘muffin tops’ and ‘cankles’.
They even have downloadable wallpapers for people to keep!
Screencapture from the website
Usually I tend to ignore things like this – companies will always court controversy in order to boost attention and create sales.
But as someone who has battled severe weight-related self esteem issues this is abhorrent to me. In what society is this acceptable? Who approves of ads such as this?
Young women (and increasingly young men) are extraordinarily susceptible to images and attitudes like this. It’s intolerance like this that creates complex and unhealthy attitudes about the body and the self.
If your product is not good enough to sell on its own merit guess what? It might not be that good at all.
* Show your support for The Butterfly Foundation of Australia by visiting their site or following them on Twitter http://twitter.com/BFoundation
Thankyou for spreading the word about the horror of this campaign. It really is just apalling that such companies are permitted to get away with advertising of this sort.