Need help getting fat?
I saw this add the other day on my FB and I cannot stop wondering HOW on earth were women thin back then? The add is from 1891 to be precise, not such a long time from an evolutionary perspective.
So no, we haven’t changed much since then.
As you may imagine, there was a heated debate in the comments with a lot of plus-sized users feeling avenged ‘See, fat is good!’ Obviously, I’m not interested in that sort of argument…
What I want to know is how did women back then manage to stay so thin that it would be embarrassing to show themselves naked in front of their ‘beloved husbands’? Seriously, how many of you have ever had trouble showing your skinny frame? Most of the people today have no trouble finding foods that fatten them, the problem is staying away from them…
Some of the comments suggested ‘food was scarce’ back then, an argument which I don’t think is valid… And the add doesn’t seem to be aimed at really poor people, women that were working God knows where women went to work in 1890, obviously wouldn’t waste money on newspapers and fancy special food. If they’d had money to spare they’d buy food first, potatoes or bread or anything cheap…
I think the add was aimed at a more middle-class type of woman, the typical stay-at-home woman of the era. How didn’t she get fat? Seems so unfair…
My guess is food was of a better quality back then, real meat and vegetables that did not contain all the crap they contain today…
And, yes, I’m quite sad - I only had a lousy omelette for lunch and now I’m trying to decide what to have for dinner, and it’s not going to be pizza… and honestly we just came back from the mall and there was this guy with a huge pizza in front of him…. lucky bastard!
I don’t know, I’ll probably have something involving two slices of some healthy bread, rye or whatever it is… and I’m sad about that…
On the other hand, at least parts of the add are truthful - in the small letters part it says the special fattening foods would make the depressed ‘happy’.. I bet they would! Who ever heard of crying over a hot pizza or staring sadly at a chocoloate cake?
This is so interesting! Body-shaming was even alive and well back then! Lol. I think it's interesting to delve into how companies try to shape trends and public opinion for their own benefit. Unfortunately it's usually very effective.
Here in America we had a fifty year "war on fat" that we just recently learned was created by studies funded by the sugar industry in order to create a smoke screen to hide how dangerous their own product was. The truth has now beginning to surface about how false that was, some fats are even deemed "superfoods" now and are supposed to fight inflammation and increase metabolism. I wish it were easier to determine who funds these studies in real time, the results would be telling.
The world is so driven by greed and the bottom line. It'd be great if humanity could move beyond this phase.