Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Many Use Food to Communicate Their Need for Help. Few Understand That.



These two ads are from ABA (Associazione per lo studio e la ricerca sull’anoressia, la bulimia e i disordini alimentari), the Italian eating disorder association. The text reads, "Many use food to communicate their need for help. Few understand that."

Food and eating are ways of expressing what the sufferer is afraid to express directly. Instead of reaching out and saying "I need help," people with disordered eating turn to food or they turn away from it. These ads make that basic fact clear, but we would like to see the series expanded to show how disordered eating has become a universal language that women and men of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities have learned to speak. Young Jennifer Connelly look-a-likes (could that girl be her doppleganger?) are certainly not the only ones who are fluent.

What's your impression of this campaign? [Osocio]

1 comment:

T.S.T. said...

First--and, yes, most superficially--those eyelashes & brows definitely make Jennifer Connelly comparisons inevitable, don't they?

Second, I think that, on the whole, I like this ad campaign, certainly more than many recent supposedly anti-ED campaigns. (I think that one in particular springs to all of our minds . . . .) While still imperfect, these ads do draw much needed attention to, for lack of a better term, SYMBOLISM of food in EDs. I suspect that the public at large remains almost entirely unaware of how metaphorical food is in the minds of anorectics/bulimics/binge-eaters/et. al. Any increase in public awareness in that direction is probably welcome.