Ontario hates fat men
By: rosalita54
Tags: alec baldwin
Category: Dalton McGuinty, Fast food, Health and fitness, heart disease, news media, obesity, personal growth, Public health, Uncategorized
Am I the only one who is offended by the latest Ontario government ad?
You know the one. There’s a close-up of a little guy, maybe ten, with a hairy back who laments his poor food and exercise choices, and admonishes his parents for bringing him up to be a fatty. The camera then pans back to a wide shot of the little guy’s head on the body of an overweight middle-aged man in his boxers sitting on a doctor’s table.
The first time I saw this ad, I said to Scott: “That looks just like you in your underwear. No offence.”
Fact is, it looks like nearly every middle-aged guy I’ve seen in his underwear — even or maybe especially Alec Baldwin. Clearly, the ad is meant to make middle-aged men feel bad about themselves, and to make middle-aged women feel bad about the way they’ve raised their kids. Or how badly they’ve fed their families.
On behalf of men everywhere, I am offended by this ad. I can assure you, if that individual had been a woman, that commercial would have been pulled a nano-second after it aired. There would have been the sound of a door of opportunity closing on a certain ad agency, the stupid agency which thought up this insensitive ad. (It was probably the same agency that dreamed up the ad in which the corpse in a zippered bag is lamenting his choice to drink and drive. )
I am predicting — and I don’t think I’m alone here — that this ad will not change the feeding or exercising regimes in Ontario households. All it will do it piss people off.
Don’t talk to us this way. We all know we need to exercise more and eat better. We already feel bad about ourselves. This negative advertising does nothing but create a backlash. It makes the Ontario government — I’m calling you out Dalton McGuinty — look small and petty. Skinny people made this ad and forgot to include fat people in their focus groups.
It is sexist, it is childish, it is not remotely amusing. It does make me think, though.
It makes me think this is another example of how this Ontario government is foolishly spending my tax dollars. Take it down, now!
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Rose Simpson
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