Well, I’m not really decrying the youth…I’m decrying the folks who came up with the “disgust-o-burger” ad.
You can’t turn on the TV anymore without someone is eating some damn bug or even worse things.
We live in a culture that is wallowing in its own nastiness. And I’m not talking sexually nasty; I had much rather see clean naked people on TV than people eating bugs.
We have a lot backwards in our society. Pretty naked girls are considered obscene; same girl with clothes on eating worms is considered just fine. Sexual imagery is considered immoral, but torturing prisoners of war is just fine.
To quote the song, it’s a crazy, mixed-up, muddled-up world.
Yipe, and that song is apparently ‘creepy’ according to the creepy song thread.
I totally take James’s point about nastiness in general, and overall I agree. I think this is a little different - the nastiness is meant constructively rather as part of some fatuous, sensationalist ‘entertainment’.
The ads are unquestionably horrible and gross. On the other hand, exaggeration (sp?) aside there is some truth in the message if not the specific ingredients depicted. Personally, I find the new crop of MacDonalds ads, with their smug, cynical, token efforts to portray themselves as a company concerned with dietary health and fitness at least as disgusting. Similarly I find the fact that ‘nice’ advertising is used to exploit kids into habits which may be harmful quite hard to take.
If this message gets across, hopefully there will be fewer kids needing the chemo’ that James mentioned. The truth isn’t always pretty.
All that said, I don’t know that these ads are the best way to approach the situation - but forget the pics for a sec. Look at the ignorance displayed by the kids in the quotes Gary posted.
That’s true, James, but my point is simply that obesity is, quite definitely, a contributing factor to many, many illnesses including cancer, heart disease, diabetes.
Of course, weight problems at the other end of the spectrum need to be tackled too, but the problem there is not how to counteract the advertising of junk food that makes people too thin. I think that is what is being attempted here. Although I’m not sure this is the best way to do it, I don’t necessarily accept that these unpleasant adverts are a bad thing. They lack subtlety and good taste, but they address potentially life-threatening ignorance.
If kids can be taught the truth about nutrition (and its opposite) then hopefully fewer of them will become prematurely ill… or dead.
Saving a kid from the habit of being overweight is a kindness.
I’m sorry, I just don’t see this as an effective way to address ignorance.
As for whatever your own weight is, learn to accept it. It’s part of who you are, and you’ll never be at peace with yourself till you can accept yourself as you are, imperfections and all.
As for anyone else’s weight, to speak plainly, that’s their own business, not yours, and not society’s.
I do not buy into this “damage people to help them avoid damage” crap.
In this case, I really don’t think the ads are designed to make people hate themselves. I think they are intended to make people aware that the stuff they are sold may be nastier than it looks and tastes.
I think you’re right to care. I don’t think we’re going to agree about these ads though
I have problems with them too. Educate children, yes…gross them out, no. And frankly, even with education, in the end, the choice of what they eat belongs to them and to their parents…not to the diet police. Give people the information they need to make reasonably well-informed choices, then get out of their way and let them tend to their own lives…that’s what I say.
A few years ago, I had a run-in with a teacher who had decided that my daughter’s ADHD was the result of eating sugar. Unbeknownst to me, she not only forbade Jo from eating the dessert I sent in her lunch, she set the other kids to watching her. I found out when I was on yard duty and actually overheard one of the kids saying “I’m telling Liz” as she ran to get the teacher after I’d told Jo to go ahead and eat her pie. Needless to say, the proverbial excrement hit the rotating implement. I get seriously p*ssed off when people pull that kind of thing…supposedly for someone else’s “own good.”
It scares me sometimes…the world I live in now is much more like the world of Orwell’s 1984 than I ever could have imagined when I read it back in the '70s.
I’m torn. On the one hand, I want to agree with you. On the other, I think this
is coddling and enabling. It’s a shame we have “Disneyized” fairy tales like
“Little Red Riding Hood” (no one helped her out of the wolf in the Grimm
version, I assure you), because it is an excellent morality tale about not
talking to strangers! But the original could hurt a child’s trust in people
(and that’ll happen soon enough). Seriously, my inner cynic is warring with
my inner bleeding-heart liberal. Perhaps when I’m a parent, I’ll only want to
protect my child’s innocence…
But do you really think your child can’t understand what’s in a particular food product without having his or her face rubbed into the details?
Heck, I grew up in cattle country. I always knew that hamburgers were made from cow parts. I ate them anyway. I might not have, had I been thoroughly grossed out by seeing disgusting pictures, but, to be honest, I’d have given them up for all the wrong reasons…and eventually appetite would have won out and I’d have eaten them again. I’ve seen it happen over and over again, frankly…disgust and even self interest aren’t enough to keep people from consuming a particular product (just ask the so-called “vegetarian” who only eats meat on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and other “special” occasions). We humans are much too complex for that.
I also grew up with graphic images of decayed lungs thanks to the anti-smoking lobby. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I took up the habit at age 20. And still I took it up, and smoked happily for 20 years. I’d still be smoking if I hadn’t had the sh*t scared out of me…not by some activist’s idea of a disgusting display but by spending my vacation coughing blood.
The bottom line is, people need to make their own choices for their own reasons. Increasing the disgust factor in an attempt to force people to take a particular point of view may hurt and frighten them in the short term, but in the end, it’s still their decision to make. Give people the facts and let them make their own choices, for good or ill. Don’t try to sicken them…just give them the information…in the long run, they will either accept or reject it, but it’s THEIR choice. With children, those choices will initially also involve their parents, as such choices should.
My other “beef,” if you will, with these ads, is they oversimplify things greatly. There are many, many, people who scarf down burgers and other such things every day and don’t suffer from obesity and its attendent problems. Then there are people like me, who has been a vegetarian for 17 years and is more than 50 pounds overweight, and suffering from pre-diabetic issues and joint problems. Condensing things down to a few disgusting images sends the wrong message. It says “avoid eating these few things and you’ll be healthy and happy.” BS. You can go your entire life without touching fast food and still be fat and unhealthy. Heck, you can smoke from the age of 16 and still die quietly in your bed at age 99, without a trace of cancer…we all know of someone who can boast that. When you over simplify matters, you make it all the more likely that people will reject your message. Kids may be innocent, but they’re far from stupid.
Shelve these ads. Give children and parents the facts (and the REAL facts, not the PC “factoids”) and then let THEM decide how they will live.
The gross-out factor hasn’t worked on me: I still sneak out for a cigarette from a pack that has a clogged decaying human heart on it. I hate it when I get the pack that has the representation of a limp penis.
I also have 4 skinny daughters, and nutrition is a huge concern in my house. It’s tough to fight images of underweight girls in the media, but truths about nutrition and body-image are my only ammunition. We’re winning, but not easily. Heck, my mother-in-law still has serious body-image / nutrition issues, and she’s 80.
