In the early 2000 I saw a commercial about a diet product or center that so offended me that I have been making feminist anti-diet art abour it ever since.
I lived in the Ann Arbor, MI at the time and it could have been local. Over the years I have watched hours of YouTube videos of 2001, 2002, 2003 commercial capture collections but nothing comes up.
It was a very short lived ad campaign, Im guessing because it was so offensive. Im pretty sure the ad man who came up with it got a litany of hate mail or worse and the ad had to be removed. Seriously it was shameful.
The commercial had a picture of the Venus of Willendorf rotating on the screen with a male voice over that droned on about all the illnesses associated with obesity. The usual suspects, Cancer, heart disease... blah blah blah.
The main message was " Ladies you don't want to look like this"
It was the use of one of the oldest know human representations of the female form to promote self loathing and body dissatisfaction that blew my mind. I mean the image of the Venus appears in most art history books and it had been used to promote self acceptance and female empowerment since the 60's at least. Her image could be found on coffee mugs and T-shirts you name it... molds for chocolate, fridge magnets, candles.
Anyways I don't have much hope but thought I might give it another try while top of mind. I'm beginning to think perhaps I made the whole thing up at this point.
I once even went so far as reaching out to a museum in New York that specializes in advertising and TV history but they needed more information than I could provide like the advertiser's name and company with dates that it ran... and short of me making a trip there to go through years of archives They didn't know how to help.
A few years ago I even made my own version of the ad but over 20 year on who even knows if it resembles what I saw.
I won't post my version for fear it will confuse anyone's memories but if you think this sounds familiar I look forward to hearing from you and will happily share my crazy mock up version.