Slimming products live in a catch-22 world, while they rely on you feeling bad about yourself in order to get you to buy them, most consumers also hate being told they’re too fat to get married – it’s a delicate balance.
While most products rely on the subtleties of a buttoning jeans struggle, the occasional product will venture into more controversial waters, offering up “real-life” scenarios to try to convince you your life would be better if you were thinner.
There was the great slimming-slash-whitening drink ad debacle of 2017, that implied it could curb domestic violence if you just drank enough of their vile little bottles.
Now, we bring you three minutes of insufferable content from C-Trimax Malaysia, a miracle sachet of alchemy that says it will make you noticeably thinner in just one week. One. Week. We’re not doctors (DUH!) but we’re mostly certain that the only thing that will make you lose any kind of weight in a week involves either some serious dietary restrictions, incessant urination, or the kind of incontinent bowels they warn you about in pharmaceutical infomercial side effect rundowns.
Here! Watch! (As always with terrible ads, we can’t guarantee you’ll ever get those wasted minutes back.):
Wearing more padding than one of our mum’s ’80s outfits with extra shoulder volume, a woman laments to her boyfriend that she would like to get married. Turns out he’s not keen on the idea. No, not because marriage is a lifelong commitment and he possesses the emotional maturity of a crayon.
You see, he’s concerned that feeding his chunky would-be wife will cost twice as much as maintaining a slimmer paramour.
Oh, sweet Jehoshaphat – is that really all you’ve got for us C-Trimax? A playground insult that doesn’t even make sense?
Hey, baby – it’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that getting the bigger piece of chicken is gonna cost me more in the long run.
Fast forward a bit to the part after she starts drinking the diet mix, and BAM! she’s thin! He wants to marry her! Life is amazing!
Pathetic. Not only does it fat shame a woman who would otherwise be considered a completely healthy size, it also manipulates the audience into thinking that the only way to get married is to fit into a size 2, and offers no scientific proof at all that this sh*t mix works (because there is no scientific proof).
This is especially worrying considering the obesity epidemic in the country, where trivializing weight loss and being healthy is a life and death matter.
Slimming brands take note, we don’t like you. We especially don’t like it when you exploit our self-esteem to your own ends. And for the love of all things good and sugary, we don’t need NO MAN to burden the cost of feeding us. We earn our own keep, and buy our own damn Oreos.
