January diets

It's that time of year again when the Weight Watchers and Special K 'drop a jeans size' adverts start bombarding us, reminding women that we must pay the price for overindulging and start paying out money to get thin (for the benefit of men) again.


Every year it's the same, except for the relatively new culture of the celebrity exercise video which is rapidly taking over, advertised in all supermarkets,
magazines and in ad breaks during Hollyoaks and Coronation Street.

You can't get away from it. The most laughable examples this year include the 'WAGS Workout' video and BB twins Sam and Amanda's 'Samanda The Twins Workout' video. Because obviously we all aspire to look like them.


I was reminded of this agonising period before Christmas had even happened. I was visiting my boyfriend's family in Wales the week before Christmas, and whilst snooping round the kitchen found a card stuck up on the pin board from the slimming club Curves, reminding my boyfriend's mum that she must remember to keep in shape over Xmas.

My mum, who I can always remember having been on a diet (she went to Weight Watchers for years and is now also a member of Curves), often receives these 'friendly' reminders from them which read along the lines of: "we haven't seen you for a while, hope you will drop in soon". In other words stop being lazy and get down here and do some exercise. Never mind that my mum has a highly demanding job from which she sustained serious wrist injuries. Even driving a car is painful for her - let alone doing any exercise - but she still feels guilty about not having gone to the gym for months.

The joke is, even if you aren't "overweight", or are but have the sense not to care, you can't help but start doubting yourself under the pressure of the mass media diet and exercise ploy after Christmas.

Women are easy pickings for the diet and beauty industry, especially at this time of year, making millions out of persuading women they are fat, ugly and worthless and then promising to make them thin and beautiful if they buy their beauty products, join up to their fitness class or diet club, or better still buy so and so's exercise video and do it at home.

This consumerist culture depends on convincing women they are worthless. So why don't we all stop believing we are for once and stop exploiting ourselves by succumbing to this ridiculous pressure to be unachievably thin, beautiful and 'perfect'.