Which is larger - the model's arms or the pickax handle?
Dear Pam Advertisers,
I have seen your ads in my mother’s cooking magazines. The tiny female model is chipping away at a hardened meatloaf mess with a pickax. The message is close to being brilliant but there is a little chunk of yuck stuck in the middle of this ad.
The model is thin – disturbingly thin. It looks like your editors photo-shopped out her arm muscles. This model would have trouble lifting a kitten, let alone a pickax. The next shot would clearly show the model’s calcium-depleted arms snapping off at the elbows as the weight of the ax succumbs to gravity and drops into the meatloaf pan behind her.
Pam, you are advertising in cooking magazines. Cooking magazines are purchased by people who actually like food. When I first saw the ad, I thought, “Another ad with a starving woman. Big surprise. These ad men are dinosaurs which is appropriate since Pam is probably made from fermented dinosaur parts.”
If you want to inspire women to get into the kitchen to use your product, you should have an inspiring figure with some muscles on her. Instead you have a blond version of Jack Skellington from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” movie. This woman is scary looking. She should be eating that meatloaf, not attacking it.
If you had a modern Rosie the Riveter wielding that weapon, you would have an ad that is re-posted all over Facebook for years to come. American women are hungry for a warrior image to inspire them. Instead of making women ashamed of their weight or disgusted in the view of women as underfed zoo animals, you could provide a timeless image of female power. The choice is yours. Give Rosie another chance.
Signed,
An American Woman with Muscle
And that coming from the woman who, while 7 months pregnant, tore out the rock and shrub garden we bought with the house.
Every pregnant woman should have their own shovel and laurel hedge to remove. It makes for healthy babies and keeps the crazies away.