Janet Bloomfield attacks alleged feminist “terrorism”; evidently unbothered by comment promising “vengeance” against feminists.

You’d think people not knowing why you had your vengeance would be kind of counter-productive.

Let’s take a trip[ through JBs mind. Hold on tight. It’s going to be spooky!

*fuzzy wave effect*
Remember when people changed the Ford billboards to say “Like a cock” in protest of billboards blocking out the horizon?
Terrorists.
You know those stop signs that say things like “worrying” or “Hammertime” under the “STOP”?
Terrorism
Banksy?
Terrorist.
Men who send women death and rape threats ?
Simply disagreeing.
Calling molested children whores?
Human rights activism.
*fuzzy wave effect*

Did that ride make anyone else want to upchuck?

It seems we have an epidemic of “Offensitivity.” Geez. While I think it’s great that people of size (hey, I’m a fluffy butt myself) have the gumption to stand up and say that they’re okay just the way they are, this backlash against “fat shaming” is too radical to me. Just like “fat shaming” is too radical to me. I see an ad like the one above and I flip it the bird in my mind too, but I shrug and think, “whatever, sex sells, I’m gonna go back to my knitting now.” I have no compulsion to deface the ad or scream or cry or beat my chest or take to twitter because frankly all those things take up too much of my energy that I could be devoting to yarn, the Hubster, bad movies, and a general fun time.

Seriously, revenge for what? Revenge for vandalism of a diet ad?

He wants to go Marc Lepine/Elliot Roger over some scribbles on an ad? Bullshit. These are men who do not need an excuse to want to hurt women. They are vile.

First they came for the boners, and I did not speak out:
because I was flaccid

The Knitting Cinephile
Just because you’re apathetic, doesn’t mean other people should be. You cannot honestly tell me you do not understand why people of a certain body type deserve acceptance rather than degradation, can you?

Lea, that ride was like the boat ride in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but worse.

Auto correct hell as=as Shown=Shoah at least it got 4by2 right (I’m east end Jewish BTW so I can say it I think).

Wait, is she outraged that people, some who are confirmed feminists, are drawing on the ads or outraged at the bomb threat, which the article makes no mention of the bomb threat being connected to any feminist or feminism organization?

Well, I KNOW which one, but still.

There’s an interpretation of quantum theory that states that, in some other universe somewhere, JB is not a feverish angry ball of ick, protesting that the world does not work to her satisfaction.

It bears mentioning once again that AVFHM hosted Mark Bell’s “hey guys you should firebomb courthouses here’s how” manifesto for years.

Thomas Ball! The manifesto guy was Thomas Ball!

I should have googled that before posting. Apologies to powerlifter Mark Bell, and British musician Mark Bell.

It seems we have an epidemic of “Offensitivity.”

People are speaking up about things that harm them in ways that you can hear, gasp horror.

The ad and *especially* the way the company reacted to people speaking out about it are just awful. women already get tons of messages every day that we can’t do anything in our lives without checking first if we look “acceptable” – and of course we never really do, because the standards are impossible to achieve without a ton of professional make-up, possibly surgery and lots of photoshopping. And some people are outraged that women might actually have a problem with an ad that tells us we can’t even go to the beach and relax there from our stressfull lives without achieving an impossible beauty standard first?

Cinephile, I don’t think it IS necessarily only “people of size” who dislike ads like this. It’s anyone who resents advertising telling you that if you don’t fit into this very narrow idea of “attractive” you need to feel bad and buy whatever product they’re shilling. It’s to the marketer’s advantage to have this “attractiveness” be as narrow as possible in order to maximize potential customer base. Personally I see an ethical issue with preying on people’s insecurities, which 90% of advertising does, but body shaming is particularly repugnant to me. And I’m not exactly a fluffy butt, as you call it.

@theknittingcinephile, maybe you aren’t aware of it, but fat people really do suffer from thin privilege, in the US, at least. We are at risk for substandard medical care from health professionals who want to treat our weight and not our symptoms. We are less likely to get a job and less likely to make as much in our work as thin people when we do get a job. Fat shaming is a big part of that, it makes it acceptable to offer poor medical care and to discriminate against the overweight financially.

I agree with Fnoicby – I am thin and can’t stand ads like that. First, I don’t know any woman (no matter her size) who doesn’t have any insecurities about her body because nobody is “perfect”, not even the people who appear in ads like this. Second, even though I profit from thin privilege, that doesn’t mean that I can’t empathize with people who don’t.

If anyone wants to check it out: “Beauty Redefined” is a really awesome nonprofit organization – from their homepage:
“Beauty Redefined is all about rethinking our ideas of “beautiful” and “healthy” that we’ve likely learned from for-profit media that thrives off female insecurity. Girls and women who feel OK about their bodies — meaning they aren’t “disgusted” with them like more than half of women today* — take better care of themselves. With body shame and eating disorders at epidemic levels, this point is crucial!”
They also sell sticky notes with positive messages you can slap on ads like this one (or just hand them out or whatever).
This is their homepage: http://www.beautyredefined.net

As someone who has had EDs and had body image issues my whole life, I do find the whole diet industry very harmful. It’s not because I’m addicted to be outraged and offensive. Spreading messages that only one type of body is acceptable in order to sell inadequately regulated and sometimes harmful products is offensive. If anyone, of any body size is unaffected by these messages, that’s great! We’re not all so lucky though.

From the Independent article:

But Arjun Seth, the chief executive of Protein World, continued to defend the poster, and told Channel 4 that the people complaining online and destroying adverts were a minority and “terrorists”.
He added that the people campaigning against the ads were: “extremist, they shout a lot, these people are irrational and extremist,” and said that “vandalising adverts” amounted to criminal activity.

So basically, he’s saying “Oh, those hysterical women!” How quaint.

Making bomb threats is fucked up and wrong. But protesting against an advertisement? Writing “fuck your sexiam” on a billboard? It takes some pretty skillful mental gymnastics to say that’s terrorism.

Especially when one of your commenters is promising some kind of revenge against feminists.

JB. Classy as always.

@sparky, I wonder how he knows they shout a lot, based on the fact they wrote on billboards? It’s almost like he’s just making things up.

Ugh. It’s kinda mind-boggling how ProteinWorld thinks they can write off all these complaints as the hysterical whining of petty Feminists with “issues”, in a public forum, and still come out of this with good PR. What’s worse than the ads is the doubling-down and the bullying attitude.

I’d be more creeped out by someone making sinister vows of vengeance against Feminists if AVFM didn’t more or less do exactly that every other week already. JB’s probably desensitized to it, like the way sewage workers can’t even notice the lingering stench of filth after a few hours working in the drains. She sure doesn’t seem to smell Paulie’s shit.

I like to think that the threats are the only thing that’s being called terrorism here and the magic marker defiling is called for all it is, vandalism. Simple, harmless vandalism.

Here’s something that irks me:
Dressing well = looking as tall and thin as possible.

I’m not tall. I’m not thin. No point on a shoe or strategically placed color blocking is going to fool anyone. It isn’t like they are going to see me the next day in a different outfit and be like, “*Gasp!* Were you stung by a whole hive of bees?”

Bomb threats count as terrorism. That’s true.
Did JB ever take the person who sent a bomb threat to Anita Sarkesian to task?
Now, if a bomb threat is terrorism, what are campaigns of sustained death and rape threats meant to drive women offline and out of certain communities?

What do you think JB calls siccing her fanboys on other women by lying about things they’ve said and done? Are MRAs threats and harassment not terrorism?

Ugggggghhhhh, I really hate the phrase “sex sells,” because it’s always applied to images of female bodies. It not sex that’s being sold, it’s a unattainable image of perfection. In any case, the ad is presumably aimed at women, most of whom would be attracted to men.

Lea

“Now, if a bomb threat is terrorism, what are campaigns of sustained death and rape threats meant to drive women offline and out of certain communities?

What do you think JB calls siccing her fanboys on other women by lying about things they’ve said and done? Are MRAs threats and harassment not terrorism?”

Actually It’s about ethnics in satireism

Ugggggghhhhh, I really hate the phrase “sex sells,” because it’s always applied to images of female bodies.

YES. Women’s bodies are not sex personified. Women are not consumable sex products.

I’m delighted to see people speak out against ads like this, ads that prey on people’s insecurities about their bodies! It should happen more often. I really believe the younger generation today isn’t going to roll over and take this kind of shaming.

fruitloopsie ,
High five!

http://www.sickchirpse.com/betasite/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Cat-High-Five-.jpg

The other thing about “sex sells” is that effectiveness does not equal ethical responsibility. Crack sells too, but most people are fine with it being illegal to sell crack because the product is so harmful.

Imagine, if you will, the model being a man in swimming trunks. Ain’t gonna happen .

but fat people really do suffer from thin privilege, in the US, at least. We are at risk for substandard medical care from health professionals who want to treat our weight and not our symptoms. We are less likely to get a job and less likely to make as much in our work as thin people when we do get a job. Fat shaming is a big part of that, it makes it acceptable to offer poor medical care and to discriminate against the overweight financially.

@isidore13, tell me about it. I hit my early teen years and the weight came on like a tidal wave. I was given dexidrine – an evil amphetamine – and put on more diets than you can shake a stick at. No matter WHAT I went to a doctor for, it was always either all in my head or entirely due to being fat.

Like all larger-then-“normal” people, I was told that no one could ever love me, no one would ever want to look at me. I was made to feel ugly, stupid and insane for simply being an unpopular size.

Because of doctor anti-fat and anti-woman bias, I almost died from micoplasmic pneumonia. And no matter why I went to see a doctor, I was given diets. BLEAH! Finally, at the age of 56 – eight years ago – I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Disease, a disease of the thyroid. For all of those decades, even though my thyroid numbers were in the damned basement, I was called a glutton, a pig, an ugly fatto…and this by the same medicos who were reading my charts!

No one should EVER be fat- or slut- or ANYTHING-shamed. But, of course, it will continue. It has always amazed me that so many people seem to feel it is their right to make anyone who does not fit whatever “standard” THEY have feel as though we do not belong and should just crawl away.

Given the exaggeration of the “threat” posed by fuck-you graffiti, I have to wonder if that “bomb threat” is even real, or if it’s just a sympathy ploy/free-advertising strategy on their part. You know, like Paulie and his made-up feminist threat to his widdle shindig in Detroit.

Yes, I went there…because they are all just so damn sleazy that I wouldn’t put it past them.

Lea
Two high fives
http://gdidetroit.com/wordpress/slides/images/high-five-cat.jpg

Samanthas
Hugs if you want them

In 2005, over 50 people died and over 700 were injured in a London terrorist bombing. I’ve personally seen an actual terrorist attack and an endless amount of defaced public advertisements in NYC.

Protein World’s CEO is a huge asshole and deserves a mountains of bad press.

This ad is awful.

In regard to it being exclusively about fat shaming/selling an unattainable image of perfection, as opposed to *not* selling sex because it’s aimed at women, I must disagree. It is both.

Ads like this *are* aimed at women and pressure them/us to conform to the fuckability mandate to be sure, and the product it’s pushing, a weight loss product, makes it especially toxic. BUT these kinds of ads also objectify women and enforce the notion that women within patriarchy are consumables.

This kind of imagery is a HUGE part of keeping women and sex as inseparable and degrades ALL women, not just women who don’t fit the thin mold. Victoria’s Secret, for example, is ostensibly aimed at women, but their marketing caters to the male gaze. This ad is about the male gaze.

Men see these things and think “Oh, that’s what women are supposed to look like (for me!) and that’s what women really care about, and if they don’t care about it, why are there so many ads like this? They *must* want to make my boner happy!” It is oppressive brainwashing/propaganda. And here’s yer rape culture, too.

Yes, “sex sells” and this is very deliberately deployed with laser precision in advertising day in and day out. As much as we loathe it, corporations with mostly male CEO’s keep it going and bank on it. Jean Kilbourne would certainly have some harsh analysis of this particularly vomitive piece of crap.

This ad and the many others like it buttress what is the backbone of patriarchy; women are the subordinate sex class.

@samanthas *fist bump* Hashi’s here too. Getting diagnosed is NOT easy. Hope you’re feeling good now!

AnAndrejaPejicBlog (@Lindsay_Irene) | April 30, 2015 at 6:52 pm
Ugggggghhhhh, I really hate the phrase “sex sells,” because it’s always applied to images of female bodies.

And yet I still her the menz cry “We’re objectified too! Women like to see big burly muscular men! We’re objectified just as much!”

And yet…If I Google “Sexy [insert noun here] ad”, and I only see women. Huh. Fancy that.

Sexy Burger ad

Sexy Car ad

Sorry in advance if these don’t work. : P

“I’ll have my vengeance, etc.” = I’m going to sit here making empty, impotent threats while rage-wanking and imagining all the hambeast thighs quivering in sudden terror at my superior masculinity!

Can I put in another angle on the “unachievable” appearance of models like this. I presume there’s a bit of photoshopping-airbrushing going on here.

There are people like me and a friend of mine who’d never look like that regardless of weight. We literally look like starving refugees when we’re thin. Knobbly knees, visible rib cage, protruding shoulder blades, hip & pubic bones.

Her partner describes her emerging from the shower as “like the centrefold from Orthopaedics Monthly”.

It’s funny, but a bit disheartening that no matter how ‘desirably’ thin you get, you’ll never achieve that smooth, effortlessly slender look.

RoscoeTCat: Oh, men get ads for BS weight loss too. And are judged by our abs, as strenuously and cruelly as (if not worse, much worse, than) women for their thighs and hips.

As an unwilling fat guy, I’m just offended by the protein miracle cure nonsense. Eat small meals and be active every day – there’s no AMAZING SECRET to that! So, it doesn’t put money into the pockets of weasel salesmen and marketers who, in the words of (now reformed fat guy) Penn Jillette, “are the same assholes who made you feel bad about yourself in high school. Don’t get fooled again.”

Even models don’t look like “models”:

Oh, and behold the miracle of Photoshop:

FatMax | April 30, 2015 at 10:52 pm
RoscoeTCat: Oh, men get ads for BS weight loss too. And are judged by our abs, as strenuously and cruelly as (if not worse, much worse, than) women for their thighs and hips.

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH! You’re too funny. By which I mean: You’re really not.

Here’s the thing about fat men: You’re allowed to exist. You exist on television, you exist in the media, you’re allowed to be fat and exist at the same time if you’re a man.

You’re not encouraged to be fat, that’s true, because our society hates us fatties as a whole, but men are not judged as hard because they don’t have abs. Most certainly they’re not treated as any less than human.

Meanwhile, women, on top of being treated as lesser than because of our gender, are treated even worse when we’re fat. We’re told that “men don’t like that”, and thus, we’re pushed to starve ourselves or go on diets that will fuck up our bodies for the rest of our lives because there are boners to be pleased, and us being “fatties” ain’t gonna do it.

Here’s something for you: Two experiments where two skinny people put on fat suits and go on dates with people from Tinder. One’s a man, and one’s a woman.

I’ll let the videos speak for themselves:

Fat Woman Tinder Date

Fat Man Tinder Date

Notice anything? Here, I’ll point it out: Notice how the men reacted to the fat woman, and notice how the women reacted to the fat guy.

The fat guy was way more “successful” in his dates. The women stuck around, actually spoke to him, and even set up more dates later on.

The fat woman was less successful, because the guys made every excuse in the book to leave.

But yeah, guys have it so much worse.

Look, Max, I don’t doubt that you have good intentions, but I think you’ve kinda got this all backwards.

@Paradoxical

Uh, actually, only one made an excuse to leave. Very rudely by saying he thought he was meeting a thin woman and complaining that he wasted gas to get there. If I remember right, one guy left before he even talked to her and one guy had to go to the bathroom or something and never came back.

All the women stayed and the subject of him being fatter than his picture was either timidly brought up or not at all.

So, yeah.

Still, my point stands. The men were quick to hightail it out of Dodge the moment they found out she was fat.

Oh, and one guy stuck around and was very polite, especially compared to the rest of the douchenozzles.