Facts You Need To Know About Diet Success Stories

My thoughts about diet success stories:

If you were to look at these two photos with the copy eliminated, what would you think they were depicting?

I saw the photos as part of a magazine ad for a diet product called SmartBurn. But when I first looked at them I only focused on the visuals and thought they were illustrating a sort of Charles Atlas ad in reverse.

Remember? The ones where the skinny weakling was pushed around by big bullies on the beach or the dance floor, and then Atlas helped him build up his body and hold his own against all comers?

In case you don’t, here’s one:

I’m not the best judge of this stuff since I’m a heterosexual woman, but when I looked at the SmartBurn ad all I could see—and all I still can see—is an attractive curvy woman in the first photo, not fat by any means although not absolutely model-perfect, who turns into a poster child for borderline anorexia in the second photo. I understand that anorexics have a distorted body image and would consider this woman’s “after” photo to be far more desirable than her “before” photo, but what’s the ad people’s excuse? Are they purposely appealing to anoxexics, who might be a very lucrative target for their product?

We’re used to seeing ultra-skinny high-fashion models, but this ad was in a very mainstream women’s magazine, nothing extreme. Is this really what most women would consider a success story? If so, I can’t imagine that most men would agree.