A Sheep In Wolf's Clothing
Representations of weight loss programs in the media
Just a heads up, the following piece talks about diet culture and the representation of weight loss and diet programs in the media. If this is something that isn’t helpful for you to read about, I suggest you give this piece a miss. Also, it’s a little long so may cut off in the app.
Last night watching the tennis (via the 9Now app), I saw ads for Juniper and Pilot. Yesterday at the bookstore I saw a book by Noom, a weight loss program I have no doubt you will have seen advertised somewhere (I’ve mainly come across it on YouTube). Noom, My Juniper and Pilot are just three of the new weight-loss programs which seem to be circulating now.
According to Forbes, and other general searches, WW (formerly Weight Watchers, is also a partner of Forbes) continues to come up as the ‘best’.
For those who have the pleasure of not understanding the WW system, each food is generally assigned a point and you have several points a day. WW was in the same group of programs as other classics like Jenny Craig, Atkins, Lite n’ Easy etc. As far as I have understood it, WW leans into being a group activity; perhaps your girlfriends are on it, there used to be meetings, that kind of thing. In Australia media personality Jackie O is currently the face, but Oprah is probably their biggest spokesperson. Celebrity endorsements can feel quite old school, and WW seems old school in this space.
Jenny Craig and Lite n’ Easy are interesting because they claim a tailored approach but lean into also helping those who would like to skip meal planning. Jenny Craig does this via dieticians, an activity plan, coaching sessions, and a range of programs, the most basics of which let you choose from their menu. The Lite n’ Easy website suggests the benefits of the system as weight loss, as well as health and convenience. They do this via members being able to choose from over 235 meals.
I have seen ads for WW on the TV, but it’s been a long time since I saw advertising for the others. Most of my understanding has been based on reading their websites to corroborate what I remember from their TV ads in the 90s and early 00s.
Interestingly, brands like Hello Fresh overlap with these mentioned above yet there is no mention of weight loss. Like Jenny Craig and Lite n’ Easy, they seek to take care of the mental load of meal planning. But this is their main draw card. It also takes care of the whole family because this isn’t a diet remember? No longer does Mum have to eat differently to the whole family if she wants to ‘be healthy’ aka lose weight. Coincidentally though, Hello Fresh also assumes and controls portion sizes, a critical component of both the Jenny Craig and Lite n’ Easy programs.
The easiness that Hello Fresh (and similar such as Marley Spoon) is lost on me. Anyone who has had to organise the order of these, and search for a discount knows that it’s not a two second job. I’m not the worst cook in the world, and never have I had such a confusing time cooking after work as I did when I was following these recipes. I may not have had to think about what to cook, but if I did, I never would have chosen panko crumbed chicken with all its steps, and actual crumbing of chicken!
The representation of Hello Fresh includes males (dads can cook too!) but in the reality it is the women I know who organise whichever meal program or food comes into the house, whether they are cooking or not.
My memory of the other diet programs mentioned are for women. Lite n’ Easy and Jenny Craig may have had men in the ads, but the reality was and is, dieting is a women’s game.
Another sliding scale is how visible the dieticians and experts are in the advertising of this industry. Think pictures of people in hairnets weighing nuts, people wearing lab coats looking at people weighing themselves etc.
This brings us to the new crop of programs I mentioned at the beginning.
Noom is trying to reinvent the dieting situation by claiming to understand the eating habits you developed as a child. They want you to stop dieting. Interestingly the parents of their target audience are probably the ones who were the target for the Jenny Craig’s, Atkins etc. To understand more, I started filling out the demographic survey. The personal tone encourages you to enter your weight but let’s you know they ‘don’t mean to pry’, when I shared some other info, it came back with encouraging commentary. The whole process is woke (they ask you both your sex and the gender you identify with) and is giving very strong - we’re not like other diet program -vibes. The first image of a person who had participated in the program was a photo that looked like a bad LinkedIn selfie profile. All very normal. As I said, I didn’t finish the survey but did reach the question which asked me to identify on a scale of 1-5 whether “Food often provides me emotional comfort.” As you can see, they are seeking to identify someone’s psychological relationship with eating. This is mirrored in their ads which sees people saying things like ‘Yes, I did always have to finish my plate’ or similar. There is a mix of genders in the ads (though they present as male and female), and the colours are pleasant. Often those trying to change their life with a diet have a phone in their hand. They are hipster beautiful. The book is also hipster beautiful. It claims to change your mindset and uses phrases people love like ‘goal setting’.
The commercial I saw for Juniper features a blonde woman, of average size in that she looks ‘normal’, talking to the camera or someone just off the camera. I can’t remember. She’s wearing lilac and becomes emotional. Next to her is a ‘before’ shot on the screen whilst she talks. Juniper’s whole thing is that it targets menopausal women (which I only find out after some more digging) and that your biology is preventing you from losing weight. To explain this to the audience a doctor comes on the screen, his body language is definitely that of someone talking off to the side of the camera. He is wearing glasses and a lab coat, so we know this person means business. Whenever an expert is introduced, there is a real ‘I don’t know how it works, but it just does’ insinuation from the woman. It’s magic! I tried to find the ad on YouTube and whilst I couldn’t, I noticed two things: the Juniper website is myjuniper which I find fascinating, like iPhone (and yes, this could be what domain is available but I’m sure f*ckjuniper was available too) and it also claims both diet and exercise don’t work so you should take this pill. When I googled ‘myjuniper’, their own paid for ad came up with the tagline that says, ‘for women overweight’.
Pilot is one I only saw last night for the first time, and I was confused. A guy was running with his skinnier friend. Then all these people came up behind them and he mentioned buying a baby a babycino. As the guy was running, we were being told that he had already started his lifestyle journey. His skinnier friend was of colour, both were hipster beautiful, and his friend spoke to the camera, about his friend. It was generally ‘funnier’ than the others, probably because it involved guys (I’ve since learnt it’s a weight loss program for men). Pilot also claims to redefine weight loss. Its angle is that it’s all about your metabolic rest rate. This is a new one for me. It’s a combo of modern medicine, health coaching and an online assessment. Online assessments are the modus operandi for these new systems. Gotta get that data. Also, all the before and after shots on the Pilot homepage are of men. There is also a doctor on the homepage, and I swear it’s the same doctor as the one in the Juniper ad! I’ve done a bit of Sherlock style sleuthing and I can’t find any connection except I’m pretty sure that Juniper is the women’s version of Pilot. Embarrassing if this is common knowledge and I think I’ve cracked a case.
This makes how they are represented even more interesting! Whenever I think about men and the beauty industry (wellness and diets are differently dressed components of this), I am reminded of The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. The whole book is amazing and a strong reminder that men will not be excluded from the bullshit women have always had to put up with. Wolf must’ve had a looking glass into the future because we are seeing that more and more.
Pilot’s colour is blue. Like the Microsoft Word blue. Juniper comes in a forest green box and Noom’s is like that soft red. So approachable. The homepage has a picture of an egg on avocado toast.
These programs are also sitting alongside a whole host of diet, lifestyle, and fitness programs that we come across online; 28 by Sam Wood, Kayla Itsines’ brand and Fluid Form Pilates are just some I can think of off the top of my head. All use influencers or are influencers to spread their message. Within this sphere, you also have a stack of fitness influencers whose content is what I eat in a day videos, workouts and other similar things to spout the benefits of different programs or other wellness products.
The industry is a complicated one. Exercise and eating well make us feel good, but our purpose for doing so is often convoluted with society’s expectations of how ‘healthy’ people look and behave. Whether they are pretending to be your friend or providing you a doctor-driven solution that is unlike anything you’ve heard, it’s all the same wolf in sheep’s clothing.
If you are interested in this type of subject matter, can I suggest you check out the following newsletters:
- Body Type by Mikala Jamison
- Burnt Toast by Virgina Sole-Smith
- The Unpublishable by Jessica DeFino