All The Facebook Ads I've Received In 24 Hours

I found this while doing research for a client. It's a page filled with all the targeted ads my Facebook page has received during a 24-hour period:

1. How Many Triangles?
brain teaser type thing, that's pretty ok

2. Bridgeport Ct Lofts 185k
way over-estimating my income, but ok

3. The Subway On Your iPhone
okay, they've picked up on my geographical info...fine

4. The Oprah Diet
well...it's just one ad. And it's *Oprah*

5. Never Shave Again
laser hair-removal system

6. Cute Cuts For Half Price
hair salon...for when I'm done with the hair removal

7. Lose Three Dress Sizes

8. Rachel's Flat Belly Diet

9. The Supermodel Diet

10. Dr. Oz's Dieting Tip

11. Don't Fit In At Church?
must be my "Eclectic" tag under "Religion" on my profile

12. Rachel Ray's New Program
2nd Rachel Ray diet ad

13. Win 4 Tickets Now
Hockey tickets

14. Oprah's New Diet
again with Oprah and her diets

15. Rachel Ray's Diet
ahhhhhh!!!!!!!

16. Invisalign, $1000 Off
braces

17. Oprah's Top Choice
Acai berry "superfood" ice-cream

18. New York Foodie?
Why no, I'm too busy hating myself as the result of the last handful of ads

19. Straight Teeth, No Braces
apparently I must have some sort of Matt Groening-esque overbite

20. Click To Sell Old Jewelry
Picture of wedding ring accompanying ad.

21. Moving And Storage
For after I sell that wedding ring

22. Many Egg Donors Available
in case my dusty 34-year-old ova don't quite cut it

23. Weight Loss Diet
oh, kill me now

24. OVAL Vodka Recipies
Oh, God, yes!!!!!

So after analyzing the ads Facebook has placed on my home page based on my profile, I have come up with a general picture of the person Facebook sees me as:

"Fatty"

I think all the pressure not to be a "fatty" makes people miserable. And a lot of the time, it's not even people who are significantly obese. In the above examples, the characters are just sorta normal. Normal people living their lives, with ups and downs, times when they eat more and times when they eat less. Sometimes, people eat more because they are really stressed. You know what causes a lot of stress? Being made to feel like you're a "fatty" and need to continually tone up & lose weight.

When I'm 50, I want to be attractive, vibrant, and possessing a reasonably-sized band of fat around my middle. I don't want to be Madonna with ropy arms and a body like a sinewy Velociraptor. I don't want my 50 to be the new 30. I want a Hunter S. Thompson brain in a Ethel Mertz body. Screw it.

Related: "Gut Check"

Photoshop Reality

Faith Hill must have taken the "skinny pills"
advertised on the magazine in order to "lose"
so much body mass for this Redbook cover

Check out the celebrity before and after pics on this professional photo retouching site. Just hit "portfolio" on the top navigation.

Absolutely fascinating. They'll just add big boobs. Remove sections of rib cages for that more svelte look. Cut out whole chunks of Beyonce's ass. Actually draw in a smile on Julia Stiles' face that wasn't there. And basically cover all the skin with this sort of...ice-cream finish. I can't even tell if Halle Berry's skin was lightened...it was just covered in this shiny flawless filter all the other photo subjects had.

Now, I realize the explanation for these extreme Photoshop alterations -- it's just Hollywood, just fantasy. But it's something Hollywood and the advertising industry and the media created within us, instilled within us from an early age. And now we act like it's self-evident -- that since we work long hours in a dreary world, we "deserve" to see no wrinkles or fat or perceived imperfections of any kind in our entertainment. That it's our "escape," and what we need more than anything is escape.


But I think, especially for women (though I'm sure for more than a few men as well), it sets up an unattainable, patently false goal. It sets up a sometimes mild, sometimes awful mass psychosis based on a false reality demurely presenting itself as true.

No, we do not "need" perfect faces in our media. We don't "need" that sort of escape. We don't even necessarily "need" escape. That's all been taught to us, and it's been taught to us for two reasons: 1) To sell stuff, and 2) To lower our ability to both use critical thinking and be proactive in changing the world around us.

The magazines should just hire comic book artists.