Apple, for the revolting tagline promoting the new iMac:
You can't be too thin. Or too powerful.
News flash to Steve Jobs and his marketing department: You sure as hell can be too thin. Your hair can fall out. You can be cold all the time. Your heart can slow down. You can become psychotic on the subject of food. In fact, you can be possessed by an illness so powerful that it actually causes you to violate the most basic human instinct: self-preservation. You can be so thin that you actually commit suicide by starving yourself, while in the grip of a delusion so powerful that neither reason nor logic nor love and empathy from others can touch it.
If you want to step inside the mind of someone who is too thin, read this. I hope you weep.
**Thanks to Cynthia for the link.
11 comments:
I was waiting for somebody in the ED community to comment on this.
When we lose our sense of humor, we are losing the battle. We need to keep focussed on what counts - getting mental health parity and real treatment for ED that works.
This type of reaction makes us appear like hysterical zealots and pushes the mainstream folks (those holding the purse strings) away. Don't let that happen.
What is it with these geek tech companies? First Intel puts out an ad depicting dark-skinned athletes as slaves to the white man and now this. Don't these people think outside the box, pun intended?
I certainly agree, anonymous, that we need better ED treatments. Mental health parity would be great too. One of the reasons we don't have these things is the mainstream perception of EDs as being the territory of spoiled rich kids and fucked-up families. Apple's ad--and was it really supposed to be funny?--plays off these perceptions, and I think it's worth calling them on it.
If we want better ED treatments, we have to take a leaf from other successful advocacy efforts and embrace education and consciousness-raising as part of the task at hand. If we appear humorless at times, I'm willing to take that risk.
Can't be too thin, huh ? Not to worry Apple, I won't be ever be that!
They simply want to market their new products and as Rachael said, they have no imagination! It is sad that they picked such a loser slogan. Ironically their logo is a food. I mean, we have apples, apple pie, apple crisp, apple brown betty, apple cake sauce... and on and on.
They could have used the versatility for those without space...the real advantage of a smaller monitor. And the ability to move it around easier.
For myself I want a camera big enough to hold, and a monitor that sits on my desk and WORKS and it can be whatever size it wants. For $10 I bought an old Dell monitor at a surplus place and it can take all the space it wants cause it's a DESK monitor. It may be big but it's quality and it's cheap. My daughter bought a new slimmer one and it bit the dust 2x before she gave up.[she now has a WORKING $10 one too] It's not like we are having a party in the space it takes. It's only space and there's plenty of it here.
As for my body, well I want it to be healthy enough to enjoy life, and that also means getting away from the computer as often as I can. Hmmmm...sometimes I take up lot's of space on the blogs of others. OOPs.
Wasn't there once a teeny tiny woman who lived in a teeny tiny house ?.....I bet she'd like teeny tiny things.
Again. Remember what APPLE told us. We 'CAN'T' be too thin. Let's agree with them.; )
Hang in there Harriet. We need our own campaign that disregards all the crap that's out there. This is one of those things where we have to plant our own seeds. Something invasive! :)
Not that there's anything funny about this at all, but I'm giggling right now because I just got this email from Apple this very morning, saw the tagline, and thought of you IMMEDIATELY.
So I thought I'd take this opportunity to thank you once again for this blog. It's very, very important.
Holy crap Harriet...you beat me to it. I got that email in my inbox, saved the pic, and was about to post it to my blog. I may post the picture, though.
God some things piss me off.
It's interesting, though, how the equate thinness and power.
::totters off to go think::
No, wait! This must mean that anorexia is so uncommon in the entire marketing and advertising department at Apple that no one got it how INCREDIBLY clueless and insensitive and 1952 this sounds. There must be a force field or special waters or something around them. The answer, clearly, is that we must get our loved ones a job at Apple FOR THEIR OWN GOOD. We must bottle the water from their taps. We must clone them!
Do you think that Apple could bring together Nicole Ritchie and Dick Cheney so that people could really think about whether being too thin or too powerful isn't a good thing?
I have a hunch that there are still loads of clueless folks. Our own understanding, sadly, comes from personal experience and therefore an interest in ED's. Our radar perks right up when we hear or see anything that we fear might be a trigger or a bad message. I try not to see each individual message that's wrong as I need to stay focused on what needs to be right and what we need to be doing to change the future. Otherwise I'd be smashing things, for sure!
YIKES to anonymous!
I posted about this last night, too. It just made me go "WHAAAA??"
There's Apple contact details for wrist slappin' on the post. Including Jobs' email.
Am I overly sensitive? I edit children's activity books, and one yesterday contained a quiz that asked "would you rather" questions, including the following: "would you rather not eat anything for a week or have to eat only your least-favorite vegetable for a week?". I flagged this as inappropriate for the target audience of young people.
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