Childless Wants Her Body Back

While awake at 3am in my hotel room the other night, I was watching an informercial for a workout system called "Mama Wants".  It seems like a great workout that's time effective and targets notorious trouble zones for women. I was genuninely interested in buying it. I may not have kids, but I've got a gut I wouldn't mind ditching and not a lot of time to devote to exercise.

But the longer I watched it, the more annoyed I became.  I understand that it's called "Mama Wants" and it's designed to be marketed to moms. Moms are hot right now. I totally get how marketing works.

An aside, back in 2006, Kathy and I were asked to author a tech book specifically marketed to women with a "girlfriends tone", heavy on the sass and girlie extras that one doesn't normally find in a tech book.  So we did and that was one of the biggest complaints about out it.  Some women didn't like feeling pandered to, they didn't like that "their" book was pink, etc. I respect that perspective, but our point of view on that was, "Thank you for your opinion, but you don't have to buy it.  If pink isn't your thing, buy a different book."  Everybody wins.  We didn't ever imply that the book was for every woman. It doesn't say "For all women" on it.  It just happens to be pink and has the word "girl" in the title -- a title that made sense for the pop culture at the time.

So I totally get that this system is targeting a niche and that I could do the workouts without being a mom and shut up about it or just buy some other workout.

This is more of a marketing critique -- a way they could have increased their sales.  I think they could have acknowledged that there are women on this planet that don't have kids that still could benefit from the workout.  Just one line in their informercial like "And it's not just for moms!" or throwing in a testimonial from a non-mom would have included a whole audience of women that they've virually excluded.  By not even throwing them a bone, they're basically saying "This workout won't benefit you unless you've carried a child", thereby implying women aren't important unless they are moms.

I realize that sounds overly sensitive or bitter even as I'm even typing it, but that was the reaction I had. Marketing is all about reactions, so I'm conveying how their marketing affected me. I'm not anti-mom -- I had a mom, my friends are moms. It's not about that. But you can't escape the mom frenzy online right now and non-moms would still like to be acknowledged once in a while. Guess what? We buy things, too. We have disposable income, even!  

Most women face the same trouble zones when they're overweight, baby or not -- glutes, inner thighs, triceps, and the all-important abdominals.  And in my opinion, all women need a stronger back, not just the ones with kids on their hips.  All women lift things, most carry groceries, do housework -- we can all benefit from those sorts of strengthening exercises. We can all benefit from these workouts.

I think, if they'd just added one line or one testimonial from someone who wasn't a mom in their marketing, I wouldn't have had this reaction. As I said, I understand the marketing tactic, I get the demographic it's trying to reach. But by negating the rest of the women on the planet, it just pissed me off.  That one tiny bit of copy, that one testimonial would have allowed me to accept, "Hey, that's their target audience, I can still do the workouts!" and go on to squat, lift and stretch to endless mom-related chatter. That would have been my choice.  But to broadstroke that it's for moms specifically makes me not want to buy the product at all. Sale lost.  And isn't that ultimately what it's all about?

But I guess their response could be the same as ours to our book, "Thank you for your opinion, but go buy another workout if you don't like it."  The difference is our book had pretty much the same technical info found in other tech books, served up in a fun, less-dry, girlie package.  I've not seen a similar non-mom workout.  It's too bad, really, the workout looks really great. 

Fat People Are, Well, Fat.

The internet is all abuzz with the "size-ist", "horrific", "appalling", "shocking", "disgusting" article on Marie Claire from writer Maura Kelly.  I saw all these tweets about how she was basically the devil incarnate and oh my god, how dare she call fat people (GASP!) fat?!  So, naturally, I had to go find out what everyone was up in arms about.

For those of you who may not have seen the article, it's here. She was discussing the gross-out factor of some show on CBS called "Mike & Molly", the (apparently) unfunny sitcom about two fat people who meet at Overeaters Anonymous and fall in love. To me, it sounds unfunny on premise, not because they're fat.

So, I read her article and my first instinct was to hop on the bandwagon and vilify her like all the other fat girls and friends of fat girls had done. Yes, her comments were pretty size-ist and insensitive. But, was I offended?  Eh... not really. There is truth in her comments, as shocking and callous as they may have been. I have to give her props for at least speaking her mind and saying what she really thought, what so many people truly think and would never actually say. From her article:

My initial response was: Hmm, being overweight is one thing — those people are downright obese! And while I think our country's obsession with physical perfection is unhealthy, I also think it's at least equally crazy, albeit in the other direction, to be implicitly promoting obesity!

No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy. And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for, by way of our insurance, than any other health problem, even cancer.

I'm going to be honest here: I agree with her in this aspect.  Do I think she's hiding her disdain behind the warm n' fuzzy shield of "I care about your health and the health of our nation"?  Sure. But that's only to round out the sharp edges of the truth. We are fat, as a nation.  We are getting fatter and, as one commenter said on her post yesterday (I'm paraphrasing), "most of the country is overweight so you shouldn't alienate your audience" (or words to that effect).  Uh, just because we're getting fatter doesn't mean it's acceptable. This is something we can actually fix!  I don't think the show is "implicitly promoting obesity", though. I think it's an opportunity to make fun of fat people under the guise of "target marketing".

I don't, however, agree with some of her other comments:

A Mini Donut in the Hand is Worth Twenty on Your Ass

So Mike and I were going out for Jamba Juice and he said he wanted to pop into Krispy Kreme for a hot donut. I obliged, feeling ambivalent about having one, deciding I probably wouldn't, but reserved the right to change my mind. When we got there, there were no warm donuts, but he decided to get a chocolate glazed anyway. I decided to pass, but then saw that they had mini donuts.

I'd forgotten that a few years ago, Krispy Kreme tried to improve upon the bad press they were getting during the "bacon burger with a krispy kreme bun" craze and they started offering smaller "mini" donuts.  I thought to myself, "Ok, well, I can still have the deliciousness, but monitor the portion size. A mini isn't so bad, what, 100 calories? 2 Points?"  I ask the woman for one mini glazed and she tells me that they only sell them in boxes of 20.

I'm sorry, what?  Boxes of twenty?!  I declined and left without anything, which was fine. Look, I don't care about not having the donut. That isn't the point. The point is they would rather sway someone to purchase and likely consume (should you not have a small village to share with) twenty times the amount of donuts the person actually set out to.  I feel like it's taking advantage of people's good intentions. It's manipulative.