subject: Eating Disorders- A Peep At Past Body Image Programming [print this page] Eating Disorders- a Peep at Past Body Image Programming
Have you ever wondered about how we got to be Fast Food Mamas who always want to diet?
I thought Id pull a few over-the-top retro ads to share. Look for the connection to eating disorders and the medias part in programming womens body image. Old advertisements are always quirky, but ads from the past can make you laugh. That is, until you realize how some things really havent changed at all. The truth is things change when you become more aware and apply what youve learned to the experiences you presently choose in your life.
1924 Beemans Chewing Gum vintage advertisement- illustrated with photo of Dr. Beeman. Marketed for relief of insomnia. Scissors to remove gum-in-hair came extra. Later youll see chewing gum promoted for dieting.
How Did We Get Here?
I want to shine a light on how the diet paradigm evolved with the fast foods and sugar.
1957 Life Savers Pep O Mint Candy vintage advertisement. Text reads, Shirley Simpkins lost her sleek appeal. She never stops eating from meal to meal. Slim Sally Hayes stays light on her feet; she makes Life Savers her Between Meal treat. Picture shows frumpy Shirley Simpkins eating cookies while two boys look on frowning, and a sleek and chic Sally Hayes eating Life Savers with two boys smiling and waving at her. Fifty years later, some things never change. (Notice the message that the girls names convey subconsciously Simpkins or simpleton implied. Sally
Hayes gets the boys hays and waves.) This was the focus on baby boomer teens having money for the first time. Parents who lived through the Great Depression wanted to give their children the good life.
1967 Clarks Diet Chewing Gum vintage advertisement. Because gum is soooo fattening. This is a subconscious connection that links gum to be the diet cure for fatty foods.
What Id like you to do before we go further is to take yourself back in time using your imagination and recall some of your favorite childhood food or fashion ads. Either T.V. or print ads from magazines you looked at when growing up. If you are taking notes, jot down what you remember... (pause) Take a few minutes to do that.
I remember this one, KOOL AID, KOOL AID, Tastes Great, KOOL AID, KOOL AID, Cant Wait. And thinking about it, this is promoting aid, a-i-d , which reminds me of First Aid. The aid must be adding sugar and artificial coloring to water to make it KOOL. We all know how alluring the sweet taste of sugar is. And of course sugar isnt so wonderful when it becomes part of a Food Addiction. I remember taking the commercial suggestions further in my earlier years because I had and have a food addiction, I would eat sugar by the spoonful. The following ad appeared promoting pure sugar by the teaspoon for dieting.
This ad was in Seventeens 1966 magazine when Twiggy was becoming popular. The ad says to eat swinging sugar to pick you up when dieting so you won't be a wallflower. I modeled in that issue and became anorexic trying to be thin enough like the 89 pound Twiggy. I did eat sugar by the spoonful and ate almost nothing else.
Or remember in the 1980s Disneys Mary Poppins song, A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, makes the medicine go down.
Interesting the fast food clip art I used on line for this presentation was massive. Under the category of healthy food there were zero clip art. The one I found was a beautiful in shape woman eating a salad. (Salad alone isnt the best healthy food. And the salad needs to be dark green leaves with lots of other veggies.) So we are a culture shaped by media advertising. When TV came on the scene, TV ads started programming dieting for the baby boomers with ads such as the Clarks Diet Chewing Gum.
Another fact today is by the time a girl starts high school shell have watched 350,000 television & print ads. Over 50% of these ads stress being thin and beautiful. What is even more astounding is many of the super models pictures are fixed to take out their imperfections. Remember Pretty Woman Julias body wasnt good enough so she had a body double.
Beauty & fashion have changed many times over the past 200 years. (The Gibson Girls of 1895 were tall athletic, self confident women and they redefined the female ideal. 38 inch bust, 27 inch waist, 45 inch hips.) Its shocking to learn the lengths women have gone through in order to achieve a presumed Perfect Beauty. There is nothing perfect in this real world except who you are and how you are made differently than anyone else on this Earth?
by: k
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