Jillian Michaels, the in-your-face trainer from NBC’s extreme weight-loss competition “The Biggest Loser,” is facing not one, not two, but three lawsuits over the “Maximum Strength Calorie Control” diet supplement she endorses. Three separate women have filed lawsuits claiming that the pills are ineffective and potentially dangerous.
Despite the claims on the box, these pills will not make you look like this woman.
That the pills don’t work is no surprise—have diet pills ever worked?—but a lot of Michaels’ fans have been expressing disappointment that she would endorse such a product in the first place. Michaels has always claimed to be anti-pill, instead insisting that diet and exercise alone should be enough to make any body into, well, her body.
To those who have lost faith in their fitness hero, I can only say this: if you are surprised, you are not paying attention. Someone who endorses The Biggest Loser’s wildly unhealthy combination of undereating and overexercising (contestants would often intentionally dehydrate themselves to shed pounds) pretty obviously doesn’t have anyone’s best health interests in mind. But because the narrative spun around The Biggest Loser is one of hope and change and reinvention and finally being the person you always wanted to be and blah blah blah, it’s understandable how audiences, especially those with their own body concerns, eventually come to put trust in a figure like Michaels.
So what does it mean when a trusted fitness guru with a culturally ideal body tells you it’s OK to take a pill? Well, you’re probably going to take a pill. And that’s why I have absolutely no sympathy for Michaels in this situation. She’s being irresponsible and she knows it. She’s participating in a cultural exercise that puts a failure to achieve an “ideal” body squarely on the shoulders of an individual. She’s perpetuating an impossible ideal and she’s lying about how to reach it—she’s lying by insisting that it can even be reached by the average person.
Michaels has dedicated her life to building this body, but tells dieters that they can achieve similar results through a pill.
What her popularity masks is that fitness is her job. The reason she looks the way she does is that she dedicates her entire life to it. Her world is a gym and a carefully planned menu of appropriate foods designed to give her those arms and those legs and those abs. She doesn’t take those pills and she knows that taking those pills isn’t going to help you, yet she tells you to take them anyway because it’s going to put dollars in her pocket and in the pockets of countless executives in suits whose interests begin and end with how much money they made this quarter.
To the women who took these pills with the hope that they would be the end of a struggle: I feel for you. I hope that you will one day go to the gym because it makes you feel strong and not because it might make you thin. I hope that you find peace in the body that you have been given.
To Jillian Michaels: I hope that one day you realize the influence that you wield, and that you choose to use it for good rather than to sell yet another fruitless, harmful dream.
A friend of mine recently sent me this video in which little Sophie, with the help of her mother, sends out an important message via YouTube. The title seems like a big DUH (“Beauty is Not How Skinny You Are”), but it surely is a message we don’t hear enough. The message extends past dissatisfaction with body weight as Sophie asks the audience “Why are you trying to look like someone else?”:
Why are we trying to look like someone else? Why do companies want us to want to look like someone else?
You might think, “I’m not trying to look like someone else!”, but the truth is that social standards of beauty say that we are only attractive if we have certain physical attributes. These physical attributes tend to come from a select pool of celebrities, too.
Just glancing at the magazine racks as I do my grocery shopping, I can’t escape constant reminders that I, too, can get Michelle Obama’s arms, or Cameron Diaz’s abs, or follow Britney’s quick weight loss plan. How do I copy Kristin Stewart’s outfit, or Beyonce’s hair? My complexion is most like Halle Berry’s, and here is a list of lipstick shades she wears! These magazines say that I, too, can be glamorous, and so can you–we just need to alter our appearances to match Hollywood standards.
As technology advances, we are not limited to simply changing workouts or getting new haircuts! A wide array of reality shows about cosmetic surgery inform us that we have new options!
A contestand from "The Swan" after having plastic surgery. Is this the cost of beauty?
Shows like The Swan (2004-2005), which About-Face protested, and ABC’s Extreme Makeover (2002-2007) portray cosmetic surgery as just another makeover. There is also MTV’s I Want a Famous Face (2004-2005), which documents people who go through surgery and makeovers to look more like the certain celebrities.
As rates of cosmetic surgery rise, more and more people request specific celebrities’ features. The most requested celebrity nose is Jessica Alba’s. Women are asking for collagen injections to get Angelina Jolie’s lips. There are people asking specifically for Scarlett Johansson’s eyes. Would you want to go under the knife to look like your favorite celebrity?
With these shows and ads telling me that looking like my favorite celebrity is as easy as 1, 2, 3, little Sophie’s voice pops back into my head: “Why are you trying to look like someone else?”
Little can remind us more of the beauty of our individuality than a child’s voice reminding us that “You are unique.” Sophie tells the viewer that there will never be another person like them, so why would we want to look like someone else?
“Do you want me to look like somebody else?” she asks. Hearing that from a young girl is almost heartbreaking because we imagine that girls as little as Sophie should be free from the media influences that tell them to change.
If we don’t want Sophie to change and doubt her own uniqueness, why would we want to change ourselves? As Sophie repeats the question “Why do you want to look like someone else?”, I find that I can’t come up with a better answer than “I don’t.”
Do you want to look like someone else? Why or why not?
–Tea
Tea is a college student in Berkeley studying Art and Sociology. While working at a café, she realized there was a lot of negative body talk floating around and wanted to encourage women to rethink the roles their bodies have in their lives. She hopes they would embrace their bodies (and minds!) rather than aspire towards unattainable ideals. What good is a body if you can’t enjoy it? When she’s not blogging for About Face, she writes, runs a photography business, and cuddles up with good books.
Part of the Gold's Gym "Cankle Awareness" campaign
“Cankles” is a charming term (like “love handles”, “muffin top”, “saddlebags”, etc.) that describes yet another thing women are made to feel insecure about: having ankles the size of one’s calves.
As reported on Feministing, Gold’s Gym graciously took a step to eradicate this nonexistent problem by declaring July “Cankle Awareness Month.”
Both the Today Show and ABC News report that ankle size is a genetic predisposition. The first solution they offer their news-seeking audiences is liposuction in the area. Popular news sources advocating surgery for a body-type trend? Ankle size is not a medical condition, and yet, it is being treated as something we should rush to talk to our doctors about.
Cosmetic surgery is promoted as a cure for cankles
Cankle Awareness Month is apparently a humorous attempt to get people in the gym, but I’m not laughing. Call me crazy, but I don’t think breeding insecurity among the already body-conscious public is funny.
Take a look at this segment that aired on Good Morning America on June 15th. The piece is called “Young, Fat, and Fabulous,” and it seems to advocate for women to have a healthy self-image at any size, but the message may not be so clear…
Did you notice the uneven general tone of this segment? Is it positive or negative?
This segment seems to flip-flop between supporting women who are happy and healthy at any size and then in a negative tone also highlights all the dangers the show’s producers believe are associated with obesity. Although these women have a clear bill of health from their doctors, at the end of the segment, Diane Sawyer tries to emphasize that they will have health complications later on… but if you listen carefully, the response is that these health risks increase due to age, not due to weight.
The piece talks about yo-yo dieting while at the same time sending a yo-yo message.
The first half of this segment is dedicated to telling viewers that being fat is OK and that these particular women are happier and healthier than they’ve ever been. Then the last half sends the opposite message — that being overweight leads to deadly health problems. Yet then they go on to say that yo-yo dieting is bad because it can also lead to terrible health complications.
I think this is reflective of our society’s overall indecisiveness about weight and health, and represents the tension that exists between wanting to be thin and wanting to be healthy and happy and love ourselves as we are.
Is it OK to be fat and fabulous? Can you be overweight and be healthy?
According to the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH), health is measured by many factors, including the right to be peaceful in one’s body.ASDAH has also done research that shows that the amount of fat on a body is a weak indicator of life expectancy and overall health.
Despite its mixed message, once you sort through the confusion, this piece does have some healthy points to take home:
Health comes in different sizes.
Acceptance of one’s body type can ultimately prove beneficial, especially when that acceptance is paired with a healthy lifestyle.
As Gabrielle mentions, the most important thing is to stay active, eat a balanced diet, and accept your weight where it stabilizes.
I think it’s fabulous that Marianne loves what she sees when she looks in the mirror. How many women of any weight and body type can actually say they love how they look? I hope that one day every woman will love herself as she is. No woman’s self worth should be determined by the scale or the size of her pants.
So I commend Marianne for telling the world that:
The good in accepting being large far outweighs the bad.
and
The only thing I’ve let go is the self-hatred that I felt.
Shouldn’t we all try to feel that way?
-Jaimie
[By the way, everyone, the fat activist movement is not a new grassroots movement. Fat activism has been alive and well for at least 15 years. Check out this site, Fat!So? for more. -Jennifer]
You’re reading the About-Face blog, so I’m gonna guess that you’re interested in the various messed-up ways women and girls are portrayed in media, and how it can really damage our self-esteem and self-respect. Well, now there’s a movie about it! It’s the new documentary “America the Beautiful,” and you should really go see it.
I saw the documentary last night in San Francisco, and I almost lost my s*&# watching the editors of Elle Girl and Seventeen magazines talking about how they need to show the thin body ideal only, or they’re “out of a job.” Really — no care for the fact that you are contributing to eating disorders, self-hatred, and general depression in young women? And the answer: No, really, none at all.
And then there’s Gerren, a 12-year-old model whose mother lets her wear next to nothing on the catwalk, but won’t let her wear a bra to school because she doesn’t think it’s appropriate. Through my work with About-Face, I’ve spoken to more moms than I can count who give their daughters the very same mixed messages.
There are just so many pertinent, poignant bits in this film, one being that the whole thing flows really well and nails the problem of our culture’s beauty obsession in a way that no somewhat-smart woman can deny. And two being that it’s an African-American man who made the film and who includes many other African-Americans who truly have something to say.
If you look carefully, you’ll spot two About-Face posters in the film! (I wish About-Face had been around to be in the movie!)
Really, I could go on and on. But I won’t.
Bring your mom, bring your friends, bring your sister. Hey, bring your brother. Cuz guys need to know this stuff too. (Plus there are quite a few bits about men and their body image too.)
My eyes are rolling so much I’m about to lose my balance. WeightWatchers takes the friendly route with their new campaign. (Warning: This link will take you to the WeightWatchers web site. Enter at your own risk.) Their web site is mosaic-ed with positive messages for women like, “Diets are mean!”, “Di*t”, “Make the New Year’s resolution to not go on a diet,” and there’s a short video montage of all the messages we are bombarded with every day at the grocery checkout counter, in magazines, on TV.
The only problem? Um, WeightWatchers is a diet. Secret’s out, guys. The definition of “diet” is “a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition). They’re called “WeightWatchers.” They sell a specialized weight-loss program. Their system assigns a points system to all types of foods, based on a Core Plan or a Flex Plan. I’ve seen women dragging their WeightWatchers points booklet around with them at every meal, doing mental math to see which foods are in their points range. Sounds like a diet, huh?
The difference between WeightWatchers and other diets is that it does not restrict which foods may be eaten, only when and how much. However, it does assign food types subjective values, and sets people down a disordered path of thinking — one that makes food morally good or bad.
How about this? Let’s do as they say and not as they do. Let’s stop dieting, start living, and take action when we see WeightWatchers’™ ads. Yeesh.
