LITTLE ROCK — The thin woman in the red bathing suit in some of the Special K cereal commercials can quit checking herself out in the mirror now. She can even start her day with a Danish!
Special K is replacing her with larger women, at least in England. No word yet on whether it will catch on here, but should more companies do this in the United States?
The new campaign is supposed to help women focus on positive factors surrounding weight loss other than their appearance, a Special K spokesman says.
The models - who will be “real women” rather than professional models - will have Body Mass Index numbers of up to 29. From 25 to 29.9 is regarded as overweight. Anything 30 or above is considered obese.
The spokesman said:
“We want to encourage a responsible attitude when it comes to body image and to show that losing weight isn’t just about the way you lookor a certain size you need to conform to, but more importantly about the way it makes you feel. The fact that we are using real women for the first time of a variety of shapes and sizes is the perfect way to encourage women to think differently about losing weight and not just focus on the numbers on the bathroom scales.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the average weight for American women over 20 years old is 164.7 pounds with a 37-inch waist.
So what exactly is “plussize?”
From Yahoo.com:
“The average dress size is a size 14. There is much debate over what qualifies as ‘plussized.’ In clothing stores it may start at a size 12 or 14. While the average fit models wear a size 2 to 6, plusmodels.com says the requirement for plussize models is a size 6-16.”
Dove has been using plussize models and real women in ad campaigns since 2004. Several other companies have gone the plus-size route, too.
High Profile, Pages 38 on 07/22/2012