Sausage or Sizzle? Which One Is Better For Weight Loss?

I’ve got a bee in my bonnet again. The model Tess Holliday has come under fire again for daring to promote fashion. She’s a model. That’s what she does.

(Check out her instructions for getting a bikini body in one easy step for Simply Be here.)

Some responses on her Twitter account were unrepeatable.

In the light of this, consider that last week an Yves Saint Laurent advertisement in Elle magazine was banned by the UK’s advertising watchdog for featuring a very underweight model. The comments in response to this on social media ranged from motherly ‘all she needs is a good meal’ to positively inhumane rants about how the girl looked like a corpse.

Apparently both campaigns were promoting the wrong kind of lifestyle.

But stop and think. What do we mean by promotion? Why does this matter? What exactly is being promoted?

I have a friend who is a professional copywriter and she often says that the objective behind an effective campaign is to sell not the sausage but the sizzle.

In other words, it’s the emotional response to the sausage’s sensory output that is likely to bring the consumer to the table rather than the sausage itself. After all, an intestine rammed with chopped offal doesn’t sound as appealing as the smell of a Cumberland ring fresh off the grill (unless, of course you’re a veggie like me but I’m comfortable running with the sausage metaphor for now).

So, back to Tess in her bikini and the YSL girl laying on the carpet. What’s the sausage being sold here? On a simple level, it’s the fashion but we all know that the printed picture is the end product of a long creative decision making process to create sizzle, so it’s clear that there is some kind of lifestyle being promoted too. Without this spark to fire up the consumer’s emotional response, there’s less likely to be a sale.

In the case of the YSL advertisement, it’s attempting to offer a kind of sophistication but the fact that the girl is lying on the floor in an empty room with seriously wasted thighs and an emaciated chest plays right into the hands of the critics waving the anti ‘heroin chic’ banner. Body dysmorphia is a well-known problem and it’s estimated that eating disorders affect 6.4% of UK adults, so I can understand why there is uneasiness to feature this kind of image in a sphere as public as a popular magazine. At least it got people talking about YSL – and the only thing worse than that, according to Oscar Wilde, is people not talking about it.

Should the advert have been banned? Probably but not necessarily just for the model, I think the shot was poorly styled in terms of the message it was sending. This leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth if this kind of negative publicity was intentional.

Is Tess doing more of the same? What’s her sizzle?

According to critics avidly waving the anti-cake banners, images of her should also be banned because she too is promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. I suppose if she’d been pictured laying on a kitchen floor surrounded by semi-eaten cream-filled chocolate sponge this would be a fair point.

But that’s not her sizzle. Not once has she encouraged anyone to overeat. She has referred to comfort eating as her only vice but not once has she actively promoted being overweight as a lifestyle choice, like thin people should go out tomorrow and eat the cake store.  We’re talking sizzle here, not sausage. She’s not promoting cake, chips, cheese or burgers. She’s promoting fashion, looking good and feeling fabulous in the body you have.

Rather than being a target for do-gooders she should be acknowledged as a champion for the thousands of obese women in this country seeking to improve their self-esteem and lose weight for their health.

And feeling good should be the sizzle that leads to weight loss.  Doctors aren’t saying that if people would just try to become a bit more beautiful it will save the NHS, so health should be the focus, not man made aesthetic standards – we’ll leave those to the shallow end of the advertising industry.

Rocking a frock Tess Holliday style – one that fits your curves the size you are now – makes a girl feel good. Who cares if it’ll be baggy in a few months’ time – cinch the waist in with a belt until it’s frock buying time again. Wear red shoes to the supermarket, pout lipstick chops at the mirror in the office and feel sexy in your own behind because it’s this kind of attitude that will get you healthy.

Why settle for the sausage when you can have the sizzle?

Want to read more?  How about some suggestions on how to get the body you want this summer?