nosh nook #23 - wednesday, april 15, 2009

when fast food gets in the fast lane (link)
04.14.09 - los angeles times - by dan neil

for years, americans have been having somewhat of a problem with body image. we've got magazines offering tips on how women can shed those extra, bikini-busting pounds for the summer. we've got pretty high rates of both obesity & eating disorders. we've got personal trainer-led tv celebrities setting the gold standard for body types. at the same time, we've got an insatiable lust for both junk food & the regulation of fatty foods...oh & we also have a problem dealing with sex.  yeah, we sort of have issues.

as dan neil explains in his article, fast food joints are attempting to repair/gloss over their own negative image through sexy tv advertising. carl's jr now has a tv commercial featuring skinny hottie top chef host padma lakshmi sucking down one of their burgers in a way that neil describes as "sex with a burger." of course, neil also describes young men as "coarse, callow, emotional imbeciles with suicidal dietary habits," so you have to take what he says with a grain of salt.

he continues on, mentioning a few other examples of sexy fast food ads & notes that "if i put on my magic deconstructing spectacles, i can see neo-feminist subversion in these messages." no shit, dude. they are friggin' fast food commercials. he also notes that no matter how sexy the commercials become, the foods will still be fattening & lead to weight gain. "if you eat a lot of (quizno's tuna melts), you'll get fat and smell strange, and nobody will want to have sex with you"...ok dude, way to back up that "skinny is sexy, fat is not" way of thinking with your flawed idea of body image. he's all over the place in his article & i hope he's being sarcastic & generally trying to prove a point by doing so, but when's the last time the l.a. times took that approach?