"Lose like a man"

T/W For weight loss dieting.

I see WW are trying to repeat the inroads they made into the consciousness of white mainstream middle class/aspirant folk. As usual travelling on the tracks laid by 'obesity' cultism, they're seeking to widen their market in terms of race, class and sex.

In this case to men, black men in particular. They've possibly been most to the edge of weight loss diet culture and are presumably now being seen as a potential untapped opportunity in an overly saturated market. Presumably, less likely to know the bitter sweet 'joy' of being told exactly what to eat and when by commercial interests. And being blamed when that doesn't tame biology.

This is helped along by increasingly vocal fat haters amongst black communities who are seeking to use it to repeat one of the more tiresome aspect of being black. The eternal "This why BP's are in the state we're in" blah, blah.

Diet and fatness are added as current favoured ah-ha tools to 'prove' supposed the supposed degeneracy of BP with their appetite for "self destruction".

Insufficiently abject veneration of pathology as the response to health issues is represented as black people's ignorance/ carelessness about themselves.

Not to speak of another round of the agenda of those who deem "lower class" blacks too uppity. Like the universal race of shame dealers, they can sniff out an opportunity to stymie the progress of others with some grinding social shame, to make them seem better without doing anything directly.

Black people are the most shamed race of people on earth, yet according to these types it's just not enough, because we are too fat. Urrgh.

Anyway, the major weapon for this slimming industry sortie is Charles Berkeley in a dress.

He seems admirably comfortable in his attire though the way he negotiates his walk up in cuban heels made me laugh, with not a little knowing. There isn't the usual bad feeling I can get from black men dolled up. Even his hair shaking/ flicking feel more like a mutual understanding, rather than a vicious uppercut of judgement  too many dragged up BM seem to feel the need for.

(Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy etc.,, I'm thinking of you. Mind you.)

Why this vision of CB is going to encourage black or any other men to go on diets I can't say.

It's a pretty desperate sounding script that doesn't feel like it quite knows how to get its message across. Taken out of it's usual context of talking down to women, it's trying to find something similar for men. But can't find the tender spot to jab its finger into the male psyche prompting them to drop everything and make dieting imperative. Something that can create the same mutual collusion of agreed falsehood, like holiday/bikini season, going to a wedding/getting wed etc.,

Bikini bodies-it is bodies that wear clothes, not clothes that wear bodies, or pre wedding-if the person proposed marriage to you as you are et.al. Often it's preparation for living some dream of feminine perfection.

The equivalent with heterosexual men would be gettin' with the laydeez. If they can link losing weight to becoming a chick magnet then it could be game on. Not that I'm here to give them any ideas.

In this ad the BS machismo feels laughably out of date, a sort of men by numbers-was it actually written by a man I wonder? With it's talk of being able to have "man food" that's food to the rest of us, it seems rather condescending echoing the inane you can have chocolate on this diet!!!

When it comes to the idea of men being drawn into weight loss diet culture, "lose like a man" is about right.