Attractive > Healthy

The following billboard is an advertisement by the company Flat Tummy Co that was featured in Times Square in 2018. Flat Tummy Co is a company that claims to help women look and feel their best through weight loss and dietary supplements. One of the company’s best selling products is its appetite suppressing lollipops. These lollipops boast the ability to maximize satiety which therefore kicks cravings and suppresses appetite, all whilst only being 35 calories. The first problem that I identified in this ad is that the model is a young woman, probably between the ages of 16-25, which suggests that the product’s target audience is young women who may not feel secure with the appearance of their bodies. Historically, young women and teenage girls have been a highly targeted population for health and beauty products because they feed upon the insecurity and vulnerability that many of these women have about not fitting society’s definition of beauty. A definition of beauty that, I must note, is centred on satisfying male attraction. Another issue that I identified in this ad is the underlying sexual tone that is used to market their product. The image of the young woman sucking on the lollipop with her eyes averted to the side, almost as if she is looking at the words “#suckit” which is in large bold letters, is incredibly suggestive. The hyper sexual image is placed on a light pink background which further reinforces the idea that the product is targeting young women. The colour pink has long been associated with beauty, youth, femininity and attractiveness. The fact that the advertisement is on the corner of a building means that it encompasses a large space and that visually, you can’t escape it. This serves as a reminder that we are constantly bombarded by messages about how our bodies are “supposed” to look and feel in order to achieve social acceptance, without much consideration for the health impacts.

This jammed version of the advertisement illuminates the implicit messages within the original ad. The words ‘sexual desirability, attractiveness, and societal beauty standards’ are on the left side of the greater-than symbol (which makes up part of the company’s logo), while the words ‘health, well-being and body acceptance’ are on the right side. This demonstrates that physical attractiveness is considered to be more important than factors such as one’s health or loving themselves as they are. This suggests that young women should gain their sense of worth and validation from their bodies and how they are viewed by external sources. The words ‘got cravings?’ and ‘#suckit’, appear as headers on either side of the greater-than symbol, which serves to further highlight how the craving to be beautiful or attractive is of a greater importance than one’s well-being. On the top right of the billboard, the sentence “1.5 million babes and counting…” has been slightly altered to showcase how wide spread and pervasive the idea of being attractive is among women, and how ingrained it is within our society.

This ad promotes unhealthy eating habits and reinforces the harmful practice of dieting all for the goal of achieving a certain beauty standard. The ad suggests that food cravings are a bad thing which communicates the idea that girls and young women should ignore natural and important bodily signals in favour of “looking good”. This leads to a spread of misinformation, the mentality that food is “bad” or “the enemy”, and it helps to foster a culture of eating disorders. It is absurd to think that a lollipop, which is filled with sugar and a number of chemically engineered products, is a supposedly better alternative to eating real whole foods.