The Foundry ad exposes one of the paradigms of the advertising industry though: sex sells. More importantly, “having sex with a beautiful woman by proxy” sells. The assumption that you use (attractive, sexually aroused) women to push your product is so ingrained in the psyche of advertisers that they would not be able to point out sexism if it bit them in the face. Who can conceive of a Coca Cola ad which only shows a bunch of fat blokes on the beach? No, it has to include attractive girls giving meaningful glances to the boys drinking Coca Cola.

I think what Lauredhel has uncovered here is that the panel on TGT is so closely associated with advertising that they either aren’t aware of the blatant sexism in the industry (in the same way that a smoker isn’t aware of the fact that their walls were painted white, not tan), or realise that it’s such a taboo subject that they bite their tongue (like the friends who visit and suppress their coughs, and try not to touch anything for fear of wiping off stains).

Was the female panellist excluded, or did she exclude herself from that webcast? My expectation is the latter – that is, I expect that she didn’t even want to be associated with the offensive material, even if only to condemn it.

What would you do in that environment?

The winning ad was disgusting, it was in essence just one long fat joke with fat pride stamped on it. I cried through the whole thing, it left me feeling humiliated and ashamed and I really don’t think it promoted fat acceptance at all in fact it did quite the opposite.

the things that are said to me, the treatment I receive because I am fat IS OFFENSIVE, it is hateful and it hurts like crazy at least the pulled ad portrayed that and seemed like it was on my side.

It really made me angry when at the end of that show the host asked someone to make him a list of the people he COULD make fun of now, as though his life was really hampered because he couldn’t tear people down. GAH… the ignorance drives me nuts sometimes!

And then there’s this, the T-shirt that he’s sworn never to make again but that is still present in the Google cache, “Kings Cross Police Now Targeting Fat Chicks”. (Story at the SMH.)

The shirt is illustrated worn by a slim white woman eating a hamburger, but the other pictures accompanying the shirt include an extremely thin woman captioned “Do I look Fat in this Shirt?”, and an extremely fat woman in a bikini, shot from behind, captioned “Does it come in my size?”. The images are clearly placed there mean-spiritedly to mock women. Until this cookie-seeking prat realises that his problem is not with fat, it is with women, he remains a complete and utter arsehole.

Also, just thought I could help here…

“”"The opening to this video does confuse me a little, because it seems that what he’s saying is that they recorded the Foundry segment a few weeks ago, then couldn’t air it for legal reasons. However, during the withheld segment itself, they make it clear twice that the panel was to be a webside, with warnings attached.”"”

TV shows are recorded a few weeks before they air. This section was recorded a few weeks ago, then edited, and after that the ABC decided it probably shouldn’t be put to air. But they decided they did want to make it available for viewing, so they chose to put it online. Rather than air their original discussion, they made a new straight-to-web discussion, and were discussing it in light of the fact that it wasn’t aired. Then last of all new intro and out-tro shots were filmed, explaining that what we are about to / just did see isn’t what was recorded during the first filming session, and this was edited in at a later date. So yeah, the segment was shot weeks ago, but always intended to be aired this week. And I highly doubt it was for “legal reasons”, probably an internal ABC decision.

This made me so fucking angry, and once again reminded me of how I really, really, REALLY want to wipe that smary smirk off Wil Anderson’s face. *seethes*

A thousand times this.

I have some close FA friends who had the complete opposite reaction and felt that it was a well thought-out ad that drew attention to something that a lot of people haven’t had exposure to i.e. FA.

I just wanted to hurt people.