Meet Phinney the Chinnie

Ain't this cute? It's an Ad Council ad for a new campaign called "Take a small step to get healthy" and the lines of demarcation on this, um, person's (male or female? You tell me) chin read, from bottom to top: "Starts doing sit-ups during commercials," "Gets 30 minutes a day of physical activity," and finally, "No longer dependent on vertically striped shirts." Oh ha ha ha, soooooo cute! The vertical stripe allusion. Yes, that's what this, um, person is dependent on - vertical stripes, because a foray into the horizontal stripe aisle at the Hefty Hideaway would incite all those derisive comments about bumblebees and beach balloons, whereas those vertical stripes are so slimming! Ha ha ha ha ha, it's all about fashion sense, inn nit?

Have I mentioned how fun it is to have a serious problem that SHOWS? Well, it's really really FUN! It's so fricking fun! FUN, I tell you, FUN FUN FUN!!!

My "issue" is out there for all the world to see (and disdain). If only it were this easy to spot smokers, obsessive-compulsives, alcoholics, drug addicts, sluts, overspenders, gamblers, manic-depressives, ten-dollar-a-day Starbuck's drinkers, three-hour-a-day internet porn surfers, procrastinators, blamers, victims and neurotics. I know - make'em all wear horizontal stripes! Ha ha ha ha ha, that would be sooo fun! Sort of a walking prison population, and all the REST of us could point, stare, mock, and humiliate. If there were anybody left NOT wearing horizontal stripes. I bet everyone would LOVE getting up in the morning, go for a nice stroll. Maybe everybody could wear cute little yellow and pink Stars of Davids - oh, somebody already tried that. Nevermind.

Back to the ad - let's see, where to begin - oh I know: a person this big cannot do sit-ups. It's like trying to open a door when there's a balloon wedged in the jam - there's just too much in the way. Besides, the amount of stress sit-ups would put on this person's back would end the Let's-Get-Fit strategy right off the bat, because it's rully rully hard to do sit-ups with a slipped disk, doncha know. Of course, that first line doesn't say, "Turn off the TV," because we wouldn't want to draw a connection between obesity and sitting immobile all day, having a constant stream of advertizing beamed at you which makes you feel ashamed, humiliated, and ugly. No, that has nothing to do with the double chin. I mean, the Ad Council wants you to be thin, right? And so does Burger King. Sure. Kinda like how RJ Reynolds wants you to quit smoking. Hmmm. Yeah.

I certainly get the concept - encourage people to be more active, and weight starts dropping like sacks of potatoes all over town.

Dear Ad Council: do you REALLY think that the fat person reading your ad doesn't already know that increased activity will lead to weight loss? God, I love simplistic bullshit like this.

Debtors: pay off your debts.
Cigarette smokers: quit smoking.
Fat-assed lazy mo-fo's: stop eating and start exercising.

The sound you hear is millions of people smiting their foreheads and saying, "Why didn't I think of that?"

"You know, I was addicted to crack; I smoked every ten minutes when I could score; I paced back and forth like a caged tiger when I couldn't. Then one day I saw that picture, you know the one, with the two eggs sunny side up in a frying pan? I thought, wow, and I just put down my crack pipe. It's been ten years since I used!" - fictional, nonexistent former addict (all right, maybe one or two people saw the eggs poster and quit using. Hmm. What did they spend on that campaign - ten million? Twenty million?)

Maybe - maybe - the fried egg poster prevented some people from trying crack. Most likely it made a larger number of non-crack-using people feel smug about their willpower and self-control. It definitely made someone rich and successful. "Clever!" "Dynamic!" "Completely ineffective at helping people stop using crack!"

Could it be that this double-chin ad campaign is meant to be preventative as well? You know, making people who are thin shudder in horror at the spector of becoming fat, so they run out and spend money on exercise equipment, diet food, and "programs."

I think the message is clear: when you have a double chin, smiling won't help - you UGLY!

Oh, and a personal message to the photo model here: did the photographer make you push your head back so your double chin would look worse? Cute shirt, by the way - hope you got to keep it!