In our society, the desire to be skinny and slim has been so ingrained into a culture that it has created a 60 billion weight loss industry. We often talk about thinness and the desire for thinness is a given. We associate thinness with attractiveness, self-worth and health. Celebrities and advertisement/billboard taught us that being thin is a worthy goal and one that is worth fighting for.

This advertisement seen on the New York subway was meant for Protein World to advertise their slimming supplement. This ad features a slim blonde bombshell in a tiny bright yellow bikini. Her hair flows nicely down her shoulder and her arms, legs and stomach is perfectly toned. Behind her in big, capital letters provokes the readers the question of, “Are you beach body ready?”. Then on the bottom right hand corner, the ad introduces ‘the weight loss collection’ suggesting to the reader that if you don’t look like that you are ‘probably’ not beach body ready, but you could be with the help of their products.

The problem is this invites readers, especially females, to compare their figures with the perfectly shaped female in the ad. If the reader’s figure does not match the female’s body, then they are definitely not ‘beach body ready’ and the perfect remedy involves losing weight. Women come in all different shapes and sizes and this advertisement puts shame on women who have different body shapes into believing they need to take a slimming supplement to be beautiful in a bikini. It is not only offending and insulting towards females who do not wear a size 0, which majority of us do not, but also setting an image to younger females that this is how women should look like. This is sexualizing women and to their bodies. Media today is already bombarded with hyper-sexualized images of women’s bodies and many females are going to emulate them and think that this is today’s female standards.

Jamming Philosophy

My jammed version of this ad shows women of all shapes and sizes already on the beach feeling confident in their bikinis enjoying their time. I want the reader to take away that you can and are bikini ready just the way you are, no matter what size you wear, zero to whatever. We do come in all shapes and sizes and even if you do not look like the female in the original ad, this does not mean you cannot wear a bikini and feel confident and sexy in your own skin. You do not have to lose weight because you do not wear a size zero. On the bottom right hand corner, instead of the slimming supplement, I have chosen the phrase “EAT WHAT YOU WANT #BEYOU”. I want to invite the readers to know that they do not need to go on a diet and restrict themselves to go to the beach. I want the readers to see the joy of these women’s faces feeling happy and confident in a bikini and not necessarily be the size of the female in the original ad. I think it is important to show younger females that it is okay to eat and that it is okay to not look like the females you see on television or magazines because truth be told the majority of us do not look like that. We need to empower females to feel confident in their own skin, something that the media is doing poorly. Since hash tagging has been a popular feature on social media, I thought it would be a nice reminder to remind the readers to be yourself because only you can be a better you than anyone else. How you view yourself is more important than how others view you. Even if others find you beautiful, if you do not find yourself beautiful than you will never be the confident person you can be.