Protein World: "Body Positivity" and a lesson on how not to motivate people

[Popido]

Did you guys miss that they sell protein? Their fans are body worshipper, therefore, their adds worship fit bodies.

They sell the "weight loss collection", the company is called protein world.
I don't think protein is for losing weight.

http://www.proteinworld.com/
I'm seeing protein, dunno about you. Unless its snake oil.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

The company isn't even 2 year old yet, so they don't give a fuck about feminists trying to shame them. Infact, this controversy boosted their sales, which is why they went on to twitter to keep it going.

Got any figures to back that claim up?

 

[Signa]

You know, considering the alternative, I'm glad Protein World is responding like dicks. They had nothing to apologize for, and when people came to their doorstep expecting one, they gave exactly as much as they owed.

It would be nice is there was a more PR friendly way to do this, but this sounds like victims donning their gowns again.

 

[DerangedHobo]

female body as a commodity

Based on that bit alone, it is a commodity. We are all commodities in this society and our worth is based solely on what we can do. If you can't tow the line then you get thrown by the way side, it is all one big vicious cycle of back stabbing and competing against each other. That isn't due to the patriarchy or white privilege, that's just good ol' fashioned capitalism.

 

[SweetShark]

This is a new trend? Be oversensitive at everything?
What is different from the other advertisments about fitness?
What do you expect? To show a fat person to be ready to go to the Beach?
Yes, this will be a lot better for the people who REALLY trying to lose weight...

Sure, it will be more honest to show a person who did used their products and do an advertisment around it.
But this is their call to make and also their money to do whatever the f*ck they want.

But don't send them cupcakes to make them change the advertisment. This will motivate them, they were correct all along.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

The problem with body image and health in this regard, is we've defined a 'healty body' as being something which isn't merely healthy, but rather on the super-skinny end of things...

Especially when it comes to women.

Yes, being morbidly obese is bad, but the evidence is a lot flimsier for people who are merely 'overweight'
And when it comes to women, many women are being shamed not even for being overweight, but merely for having a perfectly normal amount of bodyfat...

And then of course there's other things. Just because you're skinny doesn't mean you're healthy.

And that's not even getting into the people that are in borderline anorexia territory, which has consequences on a person's health far in excess of the risks of being obese...

I'm hardly healthy, but because I have a BMI under 21, nobody cares...

Fat-shaming isn't about health. It's far too superficial for that...
Saying it's about health is just a convenient way to excuse abusive behaviour, because chances are you don't actually know how healthy someone is, nor do you know, if someone is overweight, how much effort they've made to try and change that.
People seem to just assume that if you're overweight you aren't and never have made any effort to change that...

It's easy to gain weight. It's much, much harder to lose weight...
And the worst thing you can do is radical dieting. Chances are you'll lose some weight initially, but pretty soon you'll get back more than you ever lost...

It's not always harder to gain weight than lose it. I used to be a skinny as fuck 60kg. I had to train hard and work my arse off for months to gain 30kg. Don't use that bullshit excuse.

I'm willing to bet that was muscle weight. Which yes is harder to gain. Body fat weight is stupidly easy to gain and takes no training at all. Unless you have a high metabolism like, in which case stop complaining because you'll never understand what most normal people have to go through to lose excess fat.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

like omg evr1 is buteful in there own way dont listen to da h8rs cus they just jellus cus they hav ugly soles like u r perfect the way u r XDDdDD

I'm really growing tired of how far these body acceptance zealots push this type of thing. Despite what they want to believe, "beautiful" and "ugly" are both implicitly relative to some standard. Everyone can't be beautiful any more than everyone can be ugly.

"If everyone is beautiful, then no is."

Yes, I'm paraphrasing and re-purposing a quote from a children's movie, but it actually sums it up pretty well. If everyone is equally beautiful, then what manner of a complement is that? It become completely meaningless. It's like complementing someone on the fact that they exist. It just seems like having your cake and eating it (no pun intended). It's the perfect example of doublethink.
People who think this way seem to interpret "beautiful" to apply equally to all, yet treat it's application as a mark of significance on the individual to be proud of.

Not to mention the fact that there will always be a scale on which humans judge each other's appearance. You can change the scale, but you can't abolish it.

That's not to say that the company in question isn't acting like a bunch of absolute twats, or at least, their PR guy is. I'm also not saying that the perceptions of health aren't rather stupid at the moment, particularly for women, but the extent to which people take this type of thing is simply another extreme end of this particular brand of insanity.
Plus, when these people are busily vandalising these ads for their ideology it makes it rather difficult to sympathise with them. Oh, to be sure, there are certain contexts in which I would say vandalism can be justified, but they are hardily bringing down some dictatorship or fascist regime.

Edit: After looking over the situation further, the company isn't really that bad with their responses.

 

[Westaway]

These pathetic defeatist attitudes. I'm skinny as fuck. I've been very underweight my whole life. My body is without a doubt NOT beach ready. I don't care, because I'm working on it. Maybe by next summer I'll have a serviceable beach body, and maybe the summer after that I'll have a body to be proud of. So no, Protein World, I'm not beach ready right now. That's my fault, and I accept responsibility. I'm not going to start crying and demand people find my skinny and weak body attractive instead of just improving myself.

 

[Charli]

The problem with body image and health in this regard, is we've defined a 'healty body' as being something which isn't merely healthy, but rather on the super-skinny end of things...

Especially when it comes to women.

This is my only issue with it. Also not accommodating the fact that the human body comes in a variety of frames and women all carry their weight in different ways. There is no 'fit' looking girl. That's a misnomer. I am overweight at this current point in my life, spoiler alert? I do not look it, even in the slightest, because I lucked out and have a frame that carries my excess weight very very well in 'all the right places' as it t'were. When fully clothed I look pretty slim.
My sister on the other hand is not so lucky in the frame department, and has had to diet and work 10 times as hard than I'd ever consider to keep herself looking slim and as idyllic as you'd imagine 'thin and healthy' to look.

This is what people should and do take issue with when these smug corporations show us 'this is what you should look like'.

Well no actually, no one 'should look like' that unless they're built that way.

Being healthy is an excellent thing to aspire to be, however showing off a nearly naked body and stating 'are you beach ready?' as if to imply that has anything to do with anything is kind of eyerolling to me.

Don't get me wrong I get just as annoyed at obese people who go 'my doctor tells me I should loose weight, they're SHAMING me'.

But this advertising is weak as balls and no one should be leaping to it's defense either.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

The problem with body image and health in this regard, is we've defined a 'healty body' as being something which isn't merely healthy, but rather on the super-skinny end of things...

Especially when it comes to women.

Yes, being morbidly obese is bad, but the evidence is a lot flimsier for people who are merely 'overweight'
And when it comes to women, many women are being shamed not even for being overweight, but merely for having a perfectly normal amount of bodyfat...

And then of course there's other things. Just because you're skinny doesn't mean you're healthy.

And that's not even getting into the people that are in borderline anorexia territory, which has consequences on a person's health far in excess of the risks of being obese...

I'm hardly healthy, but because I have a BMI under 21, nobody cares...

Fat-shaming isn't about health. It's far too superficial for that...
Saying it's about health is just a convenient way to excuse abusive behaviour, because chances are you don't actually know how healthy someone is, nor do you know, if someone is overweight, how much effort they've made to try and change that.
People seem to just assume that if you're overweight you aren't and never have made any effort to change that...

It's easy to gain weight. It's much, much harder to lose weight...
And the worst thing you can do is radical dieting. Chances are you'll lose some weight initially, but pretty soon you'll get back more than you ever lost...

It's not always harder to gain weight than lose it. I used to be a skinny as fuck 60kg. I had to train hard and work my arse off for months to gain 30kg. Don't use that bullshit excuse.

I'm willing to bet that was muscle weight. Which yes is harder to gain. Body fat weight is stupidly easy to gain and takes no training at all. Unless you have a high metabolism like, in which case stop complaining because you'll never understand what most normal people have to go through to lose excess fat.

I've gotten pretty chunky during some of my bulks. I know what was muscle and what was fat. Even in the beginning I was a skinny man with a pot belly and losing it all and finally having visible abs wasn't some herculean task that few can do. Eat less than what you body uses, train more. Simple. Any "normal" person can do it, and it's really not hard at all.

First: For men losing weight, specifically fat, tends to be far easier than it is for women.
Second: Everybody is different, what wasn't at all difficult for you, can be very difficult for someone else.
Third: Being overweight and obese often has other issues that go along with it. Usually including bad habits, poor motivation, and chronic depression.
Fourth: Overweight people often have trouble being active at all due to the extra weight putting extra stress on their body.
Fifth: Some people have other contributing health issues, like say asthma, diabetes, and/or heart disease
Sixth: When you're used to eating huge portions, dieting can be a nightmare. It's easier to be full and content, than hungry and content.*
Finally: You started small and bulked up, which is a difficult task. That doesn't mean you get to diminish someone who started overweight/obese and had the same amount, or more trouble than you getting fit. Assuming they got fit at all.

For instance my dad and one of his brothers both have had multiple heart attacks, some sort of bypass done, and both now have congestive heart failure. This severely limits how much physical activity they can endure. They still diet and do what they can. Still I'm not expecting either to fall out of overweight status at this point, it's unrealistic.

Edit: *Being hungry and content is basically impossible it's hungry and miserable usually.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I think people just need to think for themselves. By the time people are old enough to read and understand the message on that billboard, you are (should be) able to formulate your own mind of what even "beach body ready" means. If you are comfortable in your own skin, be it ripped, fat, skinny, whatever, then you can just point your eyes forward and walk the fuck on, ignoring the silly message and using your super-power called "consumer choice".

However. If you feel that you are not ready for the beach, by whatever powers that be, then take it as motivation to get up and do something about it. The only exception to the rule is if you have someone you know or care about who does have a negative body image, and for whatever reason are not able to think for themselves or have trouble with this kind of thing, GO to them and tell them that their own opinion of them self means more than a shitty message stuck on a wall, much like any random who yells abuse at you from a bus stop for kicks.

It IS a fitness/weight loss product after all, they're not exactly going to use a fat person to model for it, or encourage a fat body image. Just like if Apple or Facebook or Sony tells you you need to be connected all the time to a wide network of friends sharing every damn thing, do you go complain to them and scream I DON'T HAAAVE THAT MANY FRIENDS, I'M HAPPY WITH 5 CLOSE BUDDIES #notasocialbutterfly YAARGH!!

 

[Tawanda]

LOL the twitter feed was hilarious, its advertising they used a hot female in a bikini to sell a product and it worked according to the CEO.

 

[Strazdas]

Uh, why would you link to buzzfeed. that website is a horrible leech with no original content.

Secondly, seriuosly are "weight loss pills" really a thing? i mean, a legal thing? Just how much you have to be unable to control yourself to need such pills to starve? Why would you want to starve to begin with? Not that either of the ads in that link show a starving person. The girl does not look anorexic (though its pretty thin) and the guy clearly has to eat a lot to keep that muscle mass alive or it would atrophy.

It's getting backlash from feminists saying they're treating the female body as a commodity, and it's getting backlash from body positivity campaigners for essentially being an ad campaign which weaponizes fat shaming.

Is it? Where? Because the backlash i saw in that article you linked was that of vandalism and not feminism. Besides, what does equality among sexes has to do with the so called "Fat shaming" to begin with?

She then says "Because adverts like yours add to the external voices telling young girls they're not good enough as they are," and they reply with "and it's ok to be fat and out of shape instead of healthy? We are a nation of sympathizers for fatties." Remember, this isn't a hacked account, this is actually how their social media people are responding to this. Even the CEO of the company said regarding Juliette, "it sounds like Juliette had a lot of issues well before she saw the PW ad," completely missing the point of her response.

While the response was admittedly rudely handled, it is not wrong. Being fat is unhealthy and thus objectively bad for anyone that considers "living" a good thing. The CEOs response was also correct - you yourself pointed out Juliettes problems in the paragraph before.

Protein World is supposed to be a place for people who want to improve their health. It seems to me they shouldn't be hating on the unhealthy. To me, their ad campaign isn't encouraging, it's anti-exercise. To me, it says if my body doesn't look like that, I shouldn't be on the beach. When I feel that way, I don't want to get out and do what's best for me, I just want to stay in and hide my shameful body. It's judgement like what Protein World is dishing out which makes me stay inside and not run in the light.

I dont know what Protein World is supposed to be other than a product depicted in those ads. I never heard of them beforehand. They do not hate on unhealthy, the worst thing you managed to show is them pointing out that being unhealthy is indeed unhealthy. The campaign is definatelly not anti-exercise - just look at how ripped the guy is. that takes A LOT of exercising. and the female one isnt bad in muscle tones either (muscle tones work different on females, they dont bulge as much as for males - different hormones do that).

OK, listen here people, "tough love" is not an excuse to act like a right dick.
Look, guys, encouraging healthy lifestyles is one thing, but it is not achieved by bullying fat people or dismissing those who work really hard trying to lose weight.

Good thing those ads werent doing that then, right?

Also what is a "right dick", is there a "left dick"? what kind of animal is that?

I'm just asking to not be treated like shit for not being thin. Or at least for it to be acknowledged that treating fat people like shit does the exact opposite of motivating them to no longer be fat.

You're not.

Hell until the 19th century and even then, being pudgy, or out right fat was the standard for attractiveness. It meant you were wealthy and ate well, in some places it still is the standard for beauty.

No, it was a standard for wealthy. Being fat meant you were wealthy enough to overeat. Fat people were "Desired" not because they were attractive, but because they were wealthy. When it came outside of the wealthy circles think still were king. We are hardwired by evolution to find healthy attractive, because it allows easier transfer for genes (higher chance of children surviving). Evolution is slow and does not change fast enough for our civilization to affect it. Especially not when we dont have the majority of the "other side" children dying out so evolution does not need to do selection of genes.

The reason wealthy people were fat back then is the same reason Brittish wealthy people have posh accents - they were looking for an easy identifiable way to differentiate from the common worker so you could look at him and know "Hes royalty". It has nothing to do with attractiveness.

Not everyone who is fat did it to them selves. Some people have glandular issues that actually make it difficult in the extreme to maintain a healthy weight of any kind. For some with the glandular issues it's out right impossible. People with depression also often eat, just because it makes them feel better. They often can't help being overweight if not outright morbidly obese, because their coping mechanism is food. Some others have inherited habits of awful diets from the way they grew up, and that's hard as hell to change. Finally some people are in situations where healthy food is simply not an option due to an inability to cook, lacking equipment to cook decent food with, or just can't afford it. So check your judgemental attitude there.

Glandular issues exist, but are so rare they would not be responsible for even 1% of people classified as overweight or above.

Depression Does have an effect, but once again people who have legitimate chemical inbalance depression is rare and in no way could account for "60% of US citizens being overweight".

The other situations you describe are the case of "Doing it to themselves" whether out of habit or out of lack of food preparation skill. Ive had a discussion couple years back regarding affordance and the end result were that you can eat healthy for as much as an average overweight person spends on food. eating healthy is not equivalent to buying prepared fruit baskets all the time you know.

I'm so freakin' fed up wiht this. Why does so many health campaigns have to imply that fat people are ugly? Sure, being fat is unhealthy, but that's my point. They could focus on the health benefits, but instead they have to make it about looks.

Well its a good thing that this campaign did not do it then?

Okay, but that doesn't really change things. They're still bringing looks into a discussion that should be about health.

A company that sells products meant to get people thin has a thin person in their advertisement? OH THE HORROR!

Sure, pics of good-looking people sell more products than pics of ugly people, and yes, many consumers feel that slim people look better than fat people. But that doesn't make it well-mannered to imply that if you're slim or not determines whether you're "beach body ready."

"Beach body" is a term that is refereed to people who work on their bodies to be more slim for summertime. it is the term to imply if you are slim or not. thats the sole purpose of the term. it has nothing to do with the actual beach.

 

[Nirallus]

I get the logic behind people who dislike the "fat acceptance" and "body positivity" movements, but to me those things don't mean looking at an obese person and saying there's nothing wrong with being obese. To me, it means admitting that everybody is at a different place in their personal health journey, and regardless of where someone is on that journey one of the things they should never feel is ashamed or self-loathing. Because shame and self-hatred are not helpful emotions in any situation. They don't motivate, they don't empower, they don't improve. They just drag a person down. Now, it's okay to be CONCERNED about your health, and I've been fat and insecure long enough to know the difference between concern for myself and hatred for myself.

It's incredibly naive, to say the least [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ea5VCXnUk], to think that every fat person is simply at an early stage of their own personal fitness journey. There are many, many people for whom "fat acceptance" and "body positivity" are about claiming there is nothing wrong with being obese. To them, yelling at everyone else to redefine beauty and health is easier than actually being attractive and healthy. So let's follow the train of their logic, and see where we end up.

First, you have to say that there is nothing overly unhealthy about being obese. The preponderance of science that contradicts that view then has to be dismissed out of hand ? "the diet industry funded all those studies", etc. Next, you have to say that there is nothing unattractive about being obese. However, the majority of people in our society don't find fat people attractive. The SJWs have the explanation ready to hand: The majority of people in our society are bigots, therefore their minds must be changed by any means necessary. They'll hop on the social media/clickbait bandwagon for Internet brownie points, and soon terms like "body shaming" and "fatphobic" are deployed along with familiar feminist canards like patriarchy. And In keeping with the pattern of redefining "privilege" into something most people have (as opposed to a privileged few), the term "thin privilege" is now being used in all apparent seriousness.

If Protein World wasn't deliberately stoking this frenzy for publicity, I'd have to say I can't blame them for reacting with candid exasperation.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

The problem with body image and health in this regard, is we've defined a 'healty body' as being something which isn't merely healthy, but rather on the super-skinny end of things...

Especially when it comes to women.

Yes, being morbidly obese is bad, but the evidence is a lot flimsier for people who are merely 'overweight'
And when it comes to women, many women are being shamed not even for being overweight, but merely for having a perfectly normal amount of bodyfat...

And then of course there's other things. Just because you're skinny doesn't mean you're healthy.

And that's not even getting into the people that are in borderline anorexia territory, which has consequences on a person's health far in excess of the risks of being obese...

I'm hardly healthy, but because I have a BMI under 21, nobody cares...

Fat-shaming isn't about health. It's far too superficial for that...
Saying it's about health is just a convenient way to excuse abusive behaviour, because chances are you don't actually know how healthy someone is, nor do you know, if someone is overweight, how much effort they've made to try and change that.
People seem to just assume that if you're overweight you aren't and never have made any effort to change that...

It's easy to gain weight. It's much, much harder to lose weight...
And the worst thing you can do is radical dieting. Chances are you'll lose some weight initially, but pretty soon you'll get back more than you ever lost...

It's not always harder to gain weight than lose it. I used to be a skinny as fuck 60kg. I had to train hard and work my arse off for months to gain 30kg. Don't use that bullshit excuse.

I'm willing to bet that was muscle weight. Which yes is harder to gain. Body fat weight is stupidly easy to gain and takes no training at all. Unless you have a high metabolism like, in which case stop complaining because you'll never understand what most normal people have to go through to lose excess fat.

I've gotten pretty chunky during some of my bulks. I know what was muscle and what was fat. Even in the beginning I was a skinny man with a pot belly and losing it all and finally having visible abs wasn't some herculean task that few can do. Eat less than what you body uses, train more. Simple. Any "normal" person can do it, and it's really not hard at all.

First: For men losing weight, specifically fat, tends to be far easier than it is for women.
Second: Everybody is different, what wasn't at all difficult for you, can be very difficult for someone else.
Third: Being overweight and obese often has other issues that go along with it. Usually including bad habits, poor motivation, and chronic depression.
Fourth: Overweight people often have trouble being active at all due to the extra weight putting extra stress on their body.
Fifth: Some people have other contributing health issues, like say asthma, diabetes, and/or heart disease
Sixth: When you're used to eating huge portions, dieting can be a nightmare. It's easier to be full and content, than hungry and content.
Finally: You started small and bulked up, which is a difficult task. That doesn't mean you get to diminish someone who started overweight/obese and had the same amount, or more trouble than you getting fit. Assuming they got fit at all.

For instance my dad and one of his brothers both have had multiple heart attacks, some sort of bypass done, and both now have congestive heart failure. This severely limits how much physical activity they can endure. They still diet and do what they can. Still I'm not expecting either to fall out of overweight status at this point, it's unrealistic.

Half of your reasoning boils down to "They're either weak physically or mentally" or "Waah it's too hard"

I've suffered depression and PTSD, yet let niether stop me. Not to mention half of my body is physically wrecked, I've literally broken my back before, and one of my back muscles is barely hanging onto the bone to the point where you can physically feel it through the skin.Yet I can still put on a 30kg weight vest and run. After breaking my foot the Doctors told me I'd never be able to run long distances again, 6 days later I was walking on it fine and 6 weeks later I could pass Military fitness tests.

This isn't limited to myself. My best mate damaged his knee and needed complete shoulder reconstruction after injuries. He couldn't walk without intense pain or do a single push up. Now he's back to sprinting and benching his own bodyweight (a solid 100kg).

A friend of mine used to be so overly large that she couldn't even see her feet. 5 months of hard training and now she's one of the fittest and most attractive looking girls I've ever seen. She also suffered from depression and was used to binge eating a lot.

There's not excuse for it. Save for the very extreme of medical conditions (such as heart conditions like you described). Absolutely no excuse.

Does it occur to you that your perseverance actually makes you a rather exceptional individual? What you can do isn't what you should expect from everyone else. While a few people like your anecdotal examples can rise to the occasion, most people generally won't be able to. Berating someone in that situation takes your exceptional nature and turns it into a smug platform of "well I did it." Which doesn't apply to everyone. Also as a military man you've had a fair bit of perseverance beaten into you. Once again not everyone is going to be up to those standards, and it's unrealistic to expect average everyday civilians, and even most military sorts to be up to it.

 

[dreng3]

Many might feel that what I'm about to write is offensive so consider this a warning, if you read on it is at your own peril, and, frankly, I won't care if you disagree, this is from the heart and many years of personal experience.

Heck with the fat acceptance, it is nothing but simplistic catering to people who believes they cannot better themselves, and that notion shapes their reality. Sure, you might trot out glandular issues and depression, heck there are even some who are too ill to perform straining physical activity, but that is no excuse.
Glandular problems aren't so common as to afford everyone an excuse, there existst medication for depression, not 100% effective of course, and since excercise releases dopamine, aka happy chemicals, it is also a nice addition for anyone suffering from depression. Last excuse is illness, an excuse I consider to be exceedingly stupid, where there is a will there is a way, do light excercise, eat less, do interval or slow excercise, there are plenty of ways to do it.

Is it wrong to shame fat people? When it becomes downright bullying it is, but we simply cannot imply that behaving in a manner that puts a burden on oneself and society as a whole is acceptable. A very liked, though slightly inaccurate comparison is alcoholism, it is a dependency, and in the end most people cannot kick it alone, they need a low point, they need to see just how far they've fallen, shortly put; the need a kick in the butt.

Now OP's comment on Protein World has certain merit, they didn't need to respond like they did, but I also understand why they didn't simply apologize. My grandma always said that "you shouldn't apologize for being right, you should only apologize for the way you show it" Protein World is right, the insecurities of others shouldn't be theirs, they might have put it more delicately but damn if they weren't right.

Lastly, what the heck is wrong with saying "beach body"? Isn't a beach body literally just a body you feel is appropriat for the beach? If you think it is shaming then you clearly feel that you don't have a beach body.

To summarize, fat people, get your act together and stop making excuses.