Yoplait Commercials

So when I read on Feministing a few days ago that Yoplait was being pulled off the air, I couldn’t help but be very relieved. Now we’ve all seen the Yoplait commercials where it pretty much advertises women as being very critical about their weight and what they put in their body. Now if you had clicked the Yoplait link, you could see the advertisement that you may still see on TV but, it will be pulled very soon.

My issue with this advertisements is that it’s very problematic for women. It would be one thing if they were advertising good health and living a healthier life but here’s the problem, THE WOMEN IN THESE COMMERCIALS SEEM PERFECTLY FINE!!! It’s obviously a commercial targeted towards women who are trying to live up to a beauty standard when it comes to weight.

If you’re anything like me when you see these commercials, you just want to scream at the woman and tell her to eat the damn cake. She contemplates a number of things she could do such as, jog in place as she eats the cake, cancel out a piece of cake by eating celery sticks, and other things of that nature. What also annoyed me was her justifying herself by saying since she’s been “good” today, she deserves a piece. I didn’t know enjoying a dessert every now and then meant bad. It makes me think back to the Carl Jr’s commercial with Audrina Patridge. For some reason in our culture, I guess women enjoying things that’s not a salad or a rice cake makes her bad.

The main reason I’m happy this commercial is no longer going to be aired is because I can relate all to well to that commercial. There was times back in my high school days where I was obsessed with EVERYTHNG that went into my body. I planned out how many hours I would work out everyday and if I ever ate anything aside what I wasn’t planning to eat, I would work out until I felt the damage was done. That did nothing but make me burn out at 16 and it took me awhile to start eating and working out normally again and realizing that I was doing more harm to my body than good.

So I do pray that this commercial didn’t do so much damage that plenty of girls like me justified their eating habits as normal or start making girls think that this was how they were supposed to be when it came to food. Something I learned is that when in modesty and when it comes to health, food is meant to be enjoyed and if you must come with a diet plan, you don’t need to contemplate everything you put in your stomach and feel guilty if you eat a candy bar or a bag of chips. It’s just not healthy. It’ll be nice to just see more commercials that showed food in a much more healthy light.