When Doves cry

Today has been a bit of a non-day. I haven't really got anything productive done yet. I've mostly been curled up on the couch, watching my new Little Mermaid DVD and feeling sorry for myself because that sore throat I was talking about has developed into into full blown phlegm attack. I know, nice, right?

Still, I wanted to talk about that Dove ad that's doing the rounds. I've seen it linked a few places, but I can't actually remember where, so sorry to those people who have posted it, because I can't remember who to thank. Anyway, here it is:



I'm so pleased that a company like Dove is talking about the problem of body image, because it feels sometimes like the world is happy to sit back and watch us all try to attain a completely unachievable ideal.

I know I am constantly conscious of 1001 things I think are wrong with my appearance. Talking to some of my friends I wonder if there's a girl in all the Western world who is happy with how she looks and doesn't have a difficult relationship with food.

It feels like we are constantly being lied to just to sell products. This only has 90 calories, this has less than 5% fat, this will increase your metabolism and help you lose weight. But does that make any of those things actually good for us? I know somewhere deep inside me, that the best way to eat is to have a balanced diet, low in refined sugars and saturated fats, but with a balance of all the different food types. But I shy away from it, convinced that it can't be right to eat three meals a day, because surely 3 whole meals will make you fat.

Are carbs good or bad? Is meat beneficial or are we better off eating other subsitutes? Dairy is generally full of fat, but the calcium in it is very good for us. How did the women of the world survive before Ski Fat Free Yoghurts?

This panoply of ideas leaves me confused, hopping from one concept of healthy to another, standing in the aisle of the supermarket for 15 minutes staring at the variety of diet pills and wondering if any of them actually work. If I skip a few meals my body craves sugar and I end up pigging out on a variety of high fat, high sugar snacks. I have also yet to find a form of exercise I really enjoy, apart from dancing, but I feel intimated by the other girls at dance classes with their amazing co-ordination, perfect hair and svelte physiques.

Will we ever be satisfied with being bigger than a size six (US size 2)? (Which, by the way, I have never and will never be a size 6.) Because I see those Dove commercials and I love the message they're giving, but I look at all the curvy women in their underwear and think, "No, I don't want to look like that." Because straight afterwards Kate Moss parades across my screen reviving her skin with a simple application of the latest Rimmel foundation and she looks simply stunning and how can the rest of us ever compete?

So keep it up, Dove. And maybe one day you'll convince the rest of us of what we really, really need to know.

On your doorstep

There is a park near me that I quite often walk through to get to the High Street. It takes about the same amount of time to get there, but it's a slightly more scenic route with the grass and the trees and the ducks and the pond (which hopefully doesn't stink, as it tends to do when it dries out!). During the summer it's really quite a pleasant walk.

But I don't know if I'll be making that particular trip for a while now, after this happened. It's scary. My area isn't the nicest area around. I live at the more chavvy end of town. But I don't think twice about walking for 15 minutes down to the late night garage just before midnight if I'm craving a milkshake or something (the 15 minute walk makes up for the calories consumed!).

It's so scary to think these things can happen so close to home, and even first thing in the morning you're not safe. What is the world coming to? Seriously?

**UPDATE: The guy who stabbed her has been arrested. So at least that's good news!

Commercial Breakdown

Since childhood I’ve always loved adverts. I would demonstrate a wider knowledge of TV commercials than the programmes they dissected. My grandad was in the industry, owning his own advertising partnership, so maybe this influenced my televison viewing, but I never nurtured an interest in entering the industry myself. I don't think I really have the creativity for it anyway. I am creative, but not in that way.

I like ads – good ads anyway. I like the way they can influence our thinking and persuade us of things we might never have thought.

On holiday a few weeks ago I was complaining about the current Skechers advert, a ‘Real World’ type set up where one housemate steals another’s Skechers and then accidentally damages them by leaving them too close to the water’s edge whilst making out with his girlfriend on the beach. It’s simply irritating – badly acted and pointless. A friend of mine questioned my complaint. “But you remember it though?”

“Yes, but it’s annoying.”

“But if you remember it, then it achieved its purpose.”

But I disagree. I may remember the advert, and personally, I am a fan of Skechers anyway, but even though I remember it, it DOES NOT make me want to buy a pair. It makes me want to poke toothpicks under the fingernails of the ‘actors’ in order to teach them a lesson about the pain their bad acting causes the general public.

The best adverts are not only memorable, but memorably GOOD. I can still recall with warmth the Milky Way advert that featured the cartoon and the little song about how “the red car and the blue car had a race.” And how old was I then? 10? But wasn't it great? I remain convinced that Milky Ways are far superior as an in-between-meals-snack choice than all that scrap metal the red car ate!

There are some abysmal adverts out now, such as the aforementioned Skechers one, but there are also some that I really love. Good adverts can be like mini-treats between TV shows, as interesting, exciting or amusing as any full-length programme. At the moment I’m loving the Quinn’s advert. Funnily enough, I’m not too bothered about sampling the product itself, but let’s face it, at the end of the day it is just another alco-pop. But the commercial itself is a pleasure to watch, particularly the longer version you get at the cinema. The poem and the graphics of the plants coming alive are beautifully Lewis Carroll-like, which I love, by the way, and the gravelly-voiced American woman who reads the words is an absolute pleasure to listen to – her voice has the kind of timbre that sends shivers down the spine. I could watch it over and over again, captured by the fairy-world hidden deep in the undergrowth where this product ‘grows’.

Another fantastic advert right now is the Mint credit card one. The Mint adverts have always been good, but the current ones are brilliant. Apparently for every clever thing that happens in the world, a very stupid one must happen to balance it out. So on one side of the world we see a man opening an envelope containing his new Mint card, offering 0% on purchases blah blah blah. So conversely, on the other side of the world, a woman is cleaning her patio doors and she walks up to the next window, leans forward to wipe it and falls through the open door. The first time I saw it I laughed out loud.

I'm wary of credit cards because I have one and it's mostly maxed out although I try to save it for emergencies (emergencies being, OMG I need that pair of shoes from that website and they don't accept Maestro), but if I was getting a credit card, I'd so get a Mint one. Or an Egg one 'cause those guinea pigs? Hilarious!