Everybody’s Loveable: especially if thin, sexy and covered in icecream

These are the sorts of images I used to help deprive myself of food when I was younger. I felt so much shame, like my body was defective, abnormal, and evidence that I was unworthy - and actually unloveable.

This problem of feeling unloveable is a common theme for girls with eating disorders. People with eating disorders at the core of themselves feel worthless. Feeling unloveable, undeserving of love - it’s all tied together. I can remember other eating disorder sufferers I had met throughout the years saying things like “I just wanted to feel loved.”

Actually I realised that what Lovable brand promotes is precisely the opposite of how it is supposed to make girls/women feel.

Not wanting to objectify women? Come on.

The guff about not objectifying women is a little rich. Pornified imagery and styling features prominently in Lovable’s latest campaign, despite their denials to the contrary.

Lovable photo shoot from Mtr on Vimeo.

One ad shows Hawkins eating an ice cream that is dribbling down her arms, a classic imitation of a popular practice in pornography. (Women dribbled in substances is becoming increasingly popular in advertising.) Another shows her sucking her index finger in a suggestive way.

There is nothing creative or empowering about Lovable’s ads. These representations reinforce existing scripts about women’s bodies and what women are “good for”.

And men’s magazine FHM must have missed the memo from Lovable about “not objectifying women’s bodies”. Here’s Jen Hawkins - “The Cream of the Crop” - in the latest issue. She’s described as “hotter” and “stickier”. There’s no questioning how FHM’s readers will interpret the image.

In 2007, New Zealand banned Lovable ads showing Jen Hawkins with a stuffed animal looking into the camera with the question “horny?” in every ad.

Clearly, Lovable’s models are waxed to within an inch of their lives, reinforcing another pornified beauty ideal.

We’re supposed to believe “Everybody’s Lovable” at the same time that Lovable’s ads link physical attractiveness to social attractiveness and more opportunities - and to being enviable. We are to envy Jen Hawkins (her breasts especially, judging by placement of the word). How does that promote self-acceptance? How does that stop body judging?