Weight Watchers co-opting Fat Lib rhetoric
Not that we didn’t see it coming… but has anyone else seen the new wave of diet advertisements from Weight Watchers? The ones that start by saying “Diet’s don’t work. Weight Watchers does”? I didn’t get a chance to record it (gimme a break, it’s two in the morning here), but you can get the gist just by visiting their current website. No, I won’t link to it, because I don’t want to give them more traffic; instead, I’ll just post screencaps.
Ah yes. “Stop dieting. Start living.” Because, didn’t you know, the calorie-counting you do on Weight Watchers isn’t dieting; it’s, um, mathematical eating. The assertion that “diets are mean” clearly doesn’t apply to Weight Watchers.
Ugh. I’m gonna go bake some Christmas Eve morning sticky buns and get my non-mathematically-eating baker on. Here’s hoping that all of you can celebrate the holidays/have celebrated the holidays without taking the time to calculate what you’re putting in your mouth.
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The criticisms of my students would serve as a good warning to visitors of Seeworthy: she talks too fast, she's too hard on us, she assigns too much work, and you have to be a dyke to get a good grade.
In other words, I'm a big, fat, queer, feminist meanie, and I am totally out to get you. Graaagh!
That’s just…special. I have noticed that’s the new thing these days, to say you’re not a diet but a “life plan” or some such BS. *shakes head* I’d much rather not be miserable and thinking about my food that damn much. If you’re on weight watchers, you basically come so obsessed with food. Most of the people I know who have done it become really annoying and obnoxious because they’re constantly figuring out their points and talking about what they’re eating.
The problem is, probably the easiest way to eat better is to actually STOP obsessing about your meals.
This is plastered all over taxis in Chicago - I saw a few the other day with the simple quotes you see in the lower right of the image you posted. They pissed me off largely because I thought, hey, that’s the same stuff fat acceptance should use! I mean: LIVE OR DIET? And DI*T?
Good stuff. Too bad Weight Watchers is JUST ANOTHER FRIGGING DIET YOU MORONS.
What about WEIGHT WAT*HERS? Remember - “This is living!”
Right. Because if you are fat then obviously you are an idiot who knows nothing of nutrition or cooking and eats nothing but fried cheese all day.
I think the grammar in that particular ad is suspiciously homey - you’re telling me no one at the ad agency knows what an adverb is? - but this might be emblematic of the softening of weight rhetoric in the culture as a whole. If people as a whole believe diets don’t work so much that you, diet company, have to shift your paradigm to make use believe YOUR PRODUCT isn’t a DIET… that’s pretty good news.
Even if what it really means is that WW is now competing more with surgical weight loss than with other diet cos.
And if WW has changed would explain why people who do WW have stopped pissing me off like they used to: for some, the point system gives them a means to discover that little switch in their brains that tells them if they’re full, and so it really ISN’T a diet exactly. It’s like Overeaters or something. If that is even subtly coming from the company itself, that’d be an interesting development.
April, I just saw one of the TV ads, and I think you may be right about a paradigm shift. I almost detected a little fear in the commercial, a “we know we’ve fucked up and we’re hoping nobody notices,” or even, “we still have to sell skinny but we’re not going to do it like those other crazies.” I still call bullshit on it: one second they say “diets are bad” and the next they show captures of their website, with online ways to enter your feeding and moving habits. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Seriously, nobody needs to monitor their life behavior like that unless they have a restricted diet due to illness. Oh, wait. Obesity is an illness. Snort. Please, someone remind me about the process of dealing with an enemy: ignore, then mock, then mimic, then attack? Is that it?
*stops eating my fried cheese long enough to comment*
Yeah, April and Pledge, I think you both have pretty great points. It shows some success on the part of anti-diet activism, but unfortunately the activist discourse is being turned against… activism. Argh.
Paul, the thought of these kinds of ads plastered on cabs is pretty disconcerting. And why the hell are “live (with weight watchers) or diet” my only options? What if I just want to live regular-like?
Hey there,
I followed the link from Alas, A Blog’s Fatty Carnival over to your blog. I’m wondering if you did resurrect the Fat Carnival or if it’s still rest in peace? If you did manage to do it, congratulations. I’d like to post a link to the carnivial. If you didn’t, good try anyways. Either way, please let me know. Cheers! darkdaughta
I’ve seen these ads on taxis and buses all over Chicago. I was just ranting about them the other day, because the first one I saw almost hoodwinked me. I got all excited at “diets are mean” and then was furious when I noticed the WW logo in the corner.
I am so gonna go flyer outside one of their locations. These bastards need to be stopped.
As someone only recently discovering SA, this is *good* advertising. I felt a guilty pang, in fact it came very close to resurrecting my sleeping ‘Fantasy of Being Thin’. Sneaky. I’m so glad I’ve found the SA community
I joined WW for about 3 months, 7 years ago, to fit into a bridesmaid dress. I became so obsessed with food, I felt like I was on the brink of a full blown eating disorder. Not Good.
And yet, the WW siren call sings to me every once in a while. I’ve resolved to live my life as I see fit, and I’ve enjoyed my Christmas dinner with no pangs of guilt!
I’m living my life, WW. See ya!
Here’s my question: if it’s just living, why does it involve paying WW money every month? Did they start charging for life?
I saw this yesterday on TV. Co-opting and marketing hand in hand. I agree it does mean the anti-diet rhetoric is catching on so much they have to change their marketing strategy, BUT let’s hope people aren’t duped. This “it’s a lifestyle” thing is fucking ridiculous.
Besides, if they aren’t a diet, why are they first on the MAFRAD list of diets Lara Frater (and others) worked on?
Interesting fact from the WW entry:
Susie Orbach, author of Fat Is A Feminist Issue sued them in 2003 because British women who did the program were becoming fatter than before.
Comment removed due to pro-diet discussion. Feel free to comment again without promoting Weight Watchers.
xoxo,
The Admin
April sounds like a corporate shill to me — that sounds like marketing speak.
For the record, all diets work in the short term and none in the long term, all events that bring people together can lead to making new friends, and losing weight is not even remotely the only way to look better.
I’m going over to Sniper’s house for fried cheese. How many points in that?
I did WW once about 20 years ago. I got so obsessed with weighing food and counting food and examining the packages of food that I became more depressed than ever about how “wrong” my body was.
It is so a diet. So nyah nyah nyah. I am blowing WW a virtual raspberry right now.
Diet programs like WW made me anorexic, and one of these days, I swear, I will sue them. The truth is, WW is dieting. Dieting is anorexia–seriously so or “lite anorexia” with calories like WW. In order to stay thin, you have to keep being an anorexic. So “We’re actually selling you a life-threatening disease!” would be accurate, but this claim is false. This patently dangerous and false claim should be jumped on by the FDA, and now. Where do we write them?
yah you gotta pay for weight watchers..the plant i work in..there are a few people on weight watchers in there….one is maintaing her weight and she told me that they make you pay is you get weighed in and you have gained weight…what the hell do you do if the meeting falls on a prementral bloat day lol? damn i’m broke …lmfao
WW is a diet. They really are banking on the stupidity of those obsessed with weight. A friend of mine is a WW groupie and cannot carry on a normal conversation about food without mentioning how many points it has or how many fit points she gains by blowing her nose.
Old stuff. I suspect that there must be a decline in membership for the new turn around. Either that or Jenny Craig is giving them a run for the money.
Does anyone have a link to the new WW commercial? would like to see it again.
The folks who created the new WW ad campaign are obviously delusional. WW, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, L.A. Weight Loss, etc., etc., ad infinitum are ALL FUCKING DIETS.
I was on Weight Watchers, too, from July 2002 until June 2003. I lost 83 pounds and I was obsessed with food, too. I quit doing WW because I was tired of counting points and writing down every piece of food that came into my mouth. While I did WW, all I heard was how it was not a diet but a lifestyle change -NOT! Simply a tricked out way to make you think it’s not a diet. I am so tired of the whole useless diet industry!!!!
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i just found this post - totally agree! Recently joined Weight Watchers, and have discovered that the people “On Plan” in the message boards are absolutely nuts! They are so consumed with their program that they lose all perspective. It’s like a socially acceptable way to maintain your obsession with food.
As a “newbie,” I posted my first question/comment on a message board and was immediately pounced on for not responding to their responses quickly enough. (Within 10 minutes of my post, they were all starting to talk about how they hate it when newbies post something and run, how I was just screwing myself by not being glued to their advice. I guess as someone with a fairly healthy relationship with food, I haven’t given myself over to The Plan fully enough yet. Heaven forbid I have a life that takes me away from the computer screen for 10 minutes!!!)
Anyway, I found your blog when I googled “people on weight watchers obsessed.” Awesome.
WW’s denial that they are indeed a diet is the worst false advertising claim I’ve seen since Ditech’s “People are Smart.”
[…] no traffic for the offender). While I guess I’m, uh, flattered that somebody thought my post about weight watchers back in December was neat, I’m (more than) a little perturbed to see it copied, more or less […]
i have no problem with people wanting to loose weight but……………… omg is ww a pain in the ass!!!! my sister in law has been on it for 3months. she has managed to loose 25lbs but every freakin meal is a nightmare!!!!!!! it’s such a pain in the ass to cook for her!!!! to give her every single ingredient, how much i use, how many does it serve blah blah blah. you can’t even make last minute plans to go out to eat because she has to run online to figure out what she can eat and how many points it is!!!! i joke around with her saying i’ve been doing ww for years now but without all the crap involved. i eat small poritons of healthy food. i eat every 3hours and once or twice a week i have a “cheat day” its sad that she can’t even eyeball a small portion. every meal she has measuring cups or pre packaged ww meal. i swear if i have another conversation on points im going to kill myself.lol!! she use to love to eat peanut butter but totally stays away from it. shes so obsessed with the total fat content now. tyring to tell her that its low in sat fat and high in good fat is liking talking to a two year old. does anyone know why they won’t separate that? glad i found this site!!
I saw this lame and poorly imaginative commercial myself, I was outraged! “Diets dont work - Weight Watchers does?!” Gimme a break!
You want to know what the bad part is? There are going to be real people that fall in for this bait and hook and give up a lot of their money.
P.T Barnum says it best: “There is a sucker born every minute”
Ha! I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way about WW. I know a group of people on it, and honestly, they are so obsessed!
I’m not surprised by the person who wrote to say that this “plan” made them anorexic.
I’m SO sick of hearing about points and fat grams and then them looking at me like I “just don’t get it”.
Nope, I don’t get it, and I don’t want it, thankyouverymuch.
Ambein dizziness….
Ambein dizziness. Ambein….