Since the beginning of April, I get to see this ad every day as I walk towards the exit of the Oxford Circus Underground. I have 4 reactions to the question ‘Are you beach body ready? Different days, different reactions.
1. Some days I walk past the ad (very) slowly and I study it. Even though it’s only April and the chances of me hitting a sandy beach this summer is extremely unlikely, I do feel a bit of motivation (sort of) to lose weight.
2. Then there are days when I want to spray graffiti all over the stupid ad or even better tear it down and stamp on it. I hate it. It makes me feel old. And fat. Do I need to be reminded at 8.30 am every morning that I am never ever going to have a body like that, ever. (well maybe if I had some serious plastic surgery, but even then…). So I mouth f**k off and I curse the copywriter who thought it was good copy to create ‘Are you beach body ready?’ and the advertiser who stuck it on a six foot billboard where I get to see it every single morning.
3.Then there are days when I go into feminist mode and mentally rage against all those advertisers who are so blatantly sexist and who make ads that make so many of us feel unworthy and shame us (through 6 foot billboards) because we do not have the perfect body (or what this world we live in considers a perfect body) to sit on a beach.
4. For the last few days, I have barely noticed it. Perhaps seeing it every day has diminished it to the irrelevant, inappropriate and unacceptable crap it actually is.
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