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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Brazilian Movie Parody Ads Target Overweight Women


Brazilian Ads for Fit Light Yogurt show parodies of movies like American Beauty & Basic Instinct, substituting a heavy-set woman for the star actresses in each.

The tagline?

“Forget about it. Men’s preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt.”

Nice.

Good ol' Brazil. At least I know my Brazilian mom's constant nagging about my weight growing up originated from someplace.

And I think the woman in the above picture is beautiful. F**k them.

39 comments:

  1. I saw this about a year ago and I said the same thing. Gal in that ad is very attractive.

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  2. Let me tell you something Valerie. I'm brazilian and these kinds of ads are very common here. But I can tell from my personal experience that even the man here feel the pressure to have a perfect thin body. Not good when you're a geek with weight issues your whole life. :(

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  3. Yeah, have to agree. Definitely hotter than Mena Suvari in the same pose.

    I'm just saying.

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  4. I find that woman in the ad to be quite lovely. Reminds me of my wife:)

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  5. Lika I said before, in the Vixen whitewhashing post...
    Love my country (I am also brazillian)... VERY ashamed of the people that live here.

    That beeing said, I also have a weight problem, so I will second what tooms said... the pressure is PALPABLE here for us guys too.

    Oh and my girfriend has a simmilar body to the girl in the ad, so it is pretty OBVIOUS i think she (the ad girl) is beautiful.

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  6. "And I think the woman in the above picture is beautiful."

    Yeah. Wow, on first glance it looked like you were posting this as an example of something good, an ad that showed an attractive woman who wasn't rail-thin used to advertise some product that had an "accept yourself" message.

    Then I read further. Weird that they'd make that woman look so good just to insist that no man would want her.

    Makes me wish I knew some Brazilian rejects.

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  7. What part of Brazil is your family from, Valerie?

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  8. Pssh....

    I'll totally hit it and call her up the next day.

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  9. "Men's preference will never change"? Like you said, the woman in the picture looks beautiful in her own way, and back in the 17th century she would have conformed very well to contemporary (Rubensesque) standards of beauty. Heck, even in the late 19th century men were not averse to a little meat on women. The problem with men is that their stated preferences keep changing ALL THE TIME and they expect women to change their bodies accordingly...

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  10. Red Jay, I believe they are from Sao Paulo.

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  11. At one point I used to be almost as heavy as the woman in that photo. Though I never had any of that self-consciousness when I was that weight -- I couldn't see the "fat" on me. I just felt I was normal.

    I can see arguments for losing weight for health reasons, but I don't see the point in making women of that size feel self-conscious. I mean, she's proportionate & pretty.

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  12. my wife is just as pretty as that woman in the ad, if not even more so. some women put beauty over brains and it shows, then they pressure other women and so on and so on.

    i've dated women from both sides. any woman that does not follow that sheep mentality is worth more than they know.

    hell, wonder woman isn't a skinny kate moss wannabe with skin draping her bones. she's a full fledged WOMAN, curves, body, brains, the whole package. anyone who says otherwise has definitely some intense internal issues to resolve.

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  13. Does anyone know the model's name?

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  14. Wow, if loving that woman is wrong, I don't want to be right.

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  15. Yeah, sorry Brazilian ad company, but the woman in that ad is DAMN sexy.

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  16. I'd seen that image before, but never thought to translate the tagline, and...wow, call me naive, but I honestly wasn't expecting that. In fact, everywhere I've seen this image crop up so far, the comments about the woman depicted were predominantly positive, so I guess I kind of expected the tagline to reflect that. Ah well, curse my optimism and naivety.

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  17. Anonymous6:34 PM

    I have to agree with the other commenters. That woman is hot.

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  18. I think she's lovely. The pose and the smile smack of self-confidence and the ownership of her sexiness. Cool.

    I used to be chunky myself. While I do think people in America (I know she's Brazilian and the ad's Brazilian) consume way too much food and carry more weight than is necessary, at the same time no one- female or male- should feel pressure to conform to any set standard of "beauty." We also shouldn't compare ourselves to whatever avatar of lovely is being touted this week... difficult to do, I know.

    I took off the weight because I was concerned about cardio health and wanting to be more active. And another major reason I won't go into here.

    Now I live in Japan where most people are think. You do see some large people, but it's rare compared to the West. Most of my students are slender... and yet they still tell me they want to lose weight! I make it a point to say something complimentary to kind of hint that if anything, the opposite is true. I think the pressure to adhere to a beauty standard is stronger here than in America. Maybe not as strong as in Brazil.

    And I live in a large city here with the largest Brazilian population in Japan.

    Anyway, men's preferences WILL change. Look at how it's changed over the centuries. The woman in the ad's probably pretty close to the Renaissance ideal of beauty. Ideals change. It just takes time. And we can control this by learning to love who we are (within reason) and learning to accept our wonderful variety, to look for other forms of beauty within and without than what we see on TV and in magazines.

    But for corn's sake... we should also try to eat a little healthier and get some exercise too, whatever body type we've been blessed with!

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  19. I'm sorry, but before I read the text I saw the picture and thought "Damn, that's a good-looking woman". They want us to believe that's unattractive and/or overweight? Screw 'em. She's beautiful.

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  20. Okay, I firmly approve a solid-going over of the marketing team with wifflebats, but come on now. . .that woman is crazily lovely.

    Never have I been so glad to be out of touch with the zeitgeist. Give me a woman with curves over rail thin fashion models anyday.

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  21. I agree val, she's way hot, and the Brazillian mentality towards women in general and weight is asinine.

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  22. Yeah, I gotta go with the crowd here. On first seeing this pic, I was elated that advertisers finally used a woman who was beautiful that wasn't concentration-camp thin as a means to promote healthy body consciousness, but alas that is clearly not the case.

    Personally, I prefer seeing images of real people in media. Dove in Canada has an excellent campaign for this sort of thing: http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.ca. I think media manipulation is a disgusting tactic that does nothing to represent the actual consumers that use an advertiser's products, and makes for a totally unattainable ideal for everyone. And now that I have a little girl, it is so important to notice this stuff.

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  23. I was going to say something and then Brendan beat me to; now I have nothing to say... *signs of frustration*

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  24. Anonymous9:01 PM

    I've seen terrible ads for beauty and diet products from a ton of different countries though. It's not a Brazilian thing. It's an Earthling thing.

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  25. Because of how the page loaded for me, I got to read the text before the picture loaded. When it did, I was surprised to see she was a smoking hottie. And this from a man whose first preference is for short, tiny women.

    Judging from the reactions of everyone on the thread, I’d say if the advertisers had been trying to reach the English-speaking comic-book-junkie demographic, they would have failed to sell much yogurt.

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  26. Valerie:
    Small world... I myself live in São Paulo. And women (and people in general) here in São Paulo are more self-confident about their bodies. SP is the Brazilian equivalent to NY. You would have been nagged a WHOLE lot more if your family was from Rio de Janeiro, witch is equivalent to a cross between LA and Miami. :P

    raistlinsghost:
    AMAZINGLY we ALSO have the Dove "Campaign For Real Beauty" here in Brazil. Although that campaign never REALLY looked Brazilian, witch is explained by the fact that it seems to be a GLOBAL campaign.

    Jamal Igle:
    [fanboy mode on]
    As an artist myself, gotta say... HUGE FAN of your work!!! [
    fanboy mode off]

    :P

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  27. Does everyone agree on teh sexyness of the Sharon Stone version of the ad?

    That model is a few pounds heftier.

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  28. Makes me wonder what they tell the women in ads like this. "Hey, we're going to use you as an example of what's not beautiful! OW, stop hitting me!"

    I agree with the sentiment that she's quite beautiful. ^^

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  29. Very sexy. Very alluring. Ignoring the ad copy. Must now pick jaw off floor.

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  30. This ad doesn't even make sense to me. As Val and many other commenters have said, the woman in the ad is very attractive and alluring and last I checked THAT IS A MAN'S PREFERENCE!

    But when you combine the imagery with the discouraging tagline, you end up with a confusing, nonsensical message. The must be the most ineffective ad I've ever seen. Well, only if you read it.

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  31. That is a sensationally sexy woman. I really, really don't agree with the aesthetic the makers of this ad are pushing for (nor the unfair mindfucking that work like this must be doing to impressionable women seeing it). Very, very sad.

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  32. Anonymous3:41 PM

    Good Lord, that woman in that ad is just gorgeous.

    With the shitty tag line, how did they hire her? "Hey, we're going to run your plump curvy body next to the wording; "Forget it, men hate fatties. M'kay? Now smile..."

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  33. It's not just that men have had different beauty ideals over time, but that even within generations men will have different tastes. I know men who would not find her attractive because she is not thin, I know men who would think she is much more sexy than conventional models, and I know men who would not care either way because they prefer men. And I have to believe that there are, in fact, men who find all sorts of body types attractive. Why does there have to be only one narrow standard?

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  34. Is she really overweight? She doesn't look overweight.

    There's a lot of women in pornography with that kind of body type, so I guess I have to side with the people who think the brains behind the ad are a little out of touch. Then again, maybe that's not the best evidence to use; there's pornography catering to men (and maybe women?) who like all kinds of body types.

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  35. Anonymous7:10 PM

    I agree. She's absolutely lovely. I can do without the skin and bones look, thank you very much. This is so much more feminine.

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  36. Hmm...

    The woman is very attractive.

    From the stereotypes I've heard of Brazil, aren't shapely buttocks and large busts preferred? Or is it like the U.S., where just about any body type will be attractive to someone?

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  37. Torsten Adair :
    Traditionally we, brazillian men like shapely and large buttocks and petit busts. But that was when it war the basic brazillian codytype, nowadays, with vrest enlangement surgery, butt enlargement surgery etc. It is more the case of "to each his own".

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  38. The woman pictured in that ad is beautiful. She has curves, hips, breasts.....

    Am I the last man on Earth who thinks a woman shouldn't look like an 8-year old boy?

    Al Bigley

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  39. Keep in mind that so much of this is Madison Avenue telling both males and females what they want. Of course, real people vary so much in actual tastes. But, we're told women want only THIS, and want to be THIS, and all men want only THAT and want to look like HIM, and....

    It's all BS.

    Al Bigley

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