If you haven’t heard about The Gruen Transfer's fat pride kerfuffle, you might have been watching House or... actually doing something productive, but the brief on The Pitch this week was fat pride: making fat Australians feel better about themselves. One of my major beefs was with fat pride being unsellable. But you know companies and ad agencies can’t really profit if we feel good about ourselves! The ABC decided that one of the advertisements that answered the brief was too offensive to air so the production company, Zapruders other films, uploaded the ad by The Foundry to a standalone website so we could all make our own minds up, which is fabulous because it allows me to sit here and write this post so that we can get a proper discussion happening instead of plugging our heads in the sand.
But first I want to discuss what went to air. Fat is what will get us back in the black - according to Richard Muntz of JWT Melbourne. This ad won 3 votes to 1, yet it presents fat people as stereotypical over consumers. I’m sorry, I’m confused. How can I get behind an assumption that is ugly and ill informed and well, the reason for the brief? Well, I ought to get behind it because it doesn’t offend me, according to Aunty. I don’t feel I consume any more or less than my slender associates. Headless fatty shots enrage me. And I know for a fact more plus sized clothes would SO not be made even if we were living in JWT Melbourne’s fantasy land. You know what? I AM offended! And this tripe not only made it to air, but won - not by default either, Tom Sampson and Bram Williams put their vote behind it, even though they were concerned by offense in the Foundry ad!
The ad that ABC wouldn’t put to air was created by The Foundry, after Creative Director Adam Hunt (who no longer works for the agency) had an epiphany in a pub after a friend told a fat chick joke. There’s just a lot of stuff going on this ad that many people take issue with, some of them have far more experience with discrimination and oppression than I do. What’s problematic: this isn’t the Oppression Olympics, and lumping different kinds of discrimination together is dicey at best; the racist and homophobic jokes dealt with torture and heinous ill intent, while the “fat joke” was rather soft in comparison; and in the end, the fat joke was pretty much just flat out sexist. Hunt’s intent was good, but the execution was poor, as Todd Sampson said. I found that repeated viewings of the advertisement helped even out the shock of the first “joke”, but as part of the regular format of the show viewers would have only had once chance to watch it.The bonus here is that you can watch it, and the panel discussion, as many times as you want over here at antiprejudicead.net.
My verdict? Neither ad made fat Australians feel better about themselves, thus the brief went unanswered. The JWT ad that aired was insulting and played into tired stereotypes. The unaired Foundry ad reinforced the message that the “winning” ad was a big fat joke (take it both ways, it works). It also supports the unsaid notion that racism and homophobia are problems that have been solved and have been put in some kind of embarrassing scrapbook of Australia’s blighted memories. Discrimination of all kinds live and breed quite successfully in Australia - yes, they’re all ugly but none of them need to use the others to “get a leg up” in order to be discussed. Both ad agencies really need to review their biases and do a bit of reading.
What I did appreciate was that the brief and the two “solutions” actually shoved this issue on to the tele for a brief moment, where it was henceforth shoved back on to the internet where we’ve all been talking about it for years. I honestly look forward to the discussion opening up a little more, and I’m hopeful perhaps even the advertising industry will challenge its long held assumptions about fat people. But you know, I’m just a crazy fool with a dream and a smoking hot size 24 body.
Natalie Perkins has been fat for over 10 years, and has loved her body consistently and regularly since puberty. She is a freelance graphic artist, and writes for her own blog at definatalie.com.
