Do you know how to swim? Yes? OK. Do you need sunscreen for your skin tone? Yes? No? OK. How about a bathing suit? Do you have one of those? OK. Prefer to go naked/keep your shorts on? That’s fine too.
I now declare your body ready for the beach. You are beach body ready. Off you go, have fun. And that is where this article should end.
Instead, it is just about to start. Because the same advertisement that was banned in the UK over body confidence and health concerns at the end of April has now been in the US for almost a month – with little controversy.
The ad features a black and white, svelte-yet-curvy, fair-haired and fair-skinned woman in a bright yellow bikini. Her hair is long and lush, her lips full, and her waist is tiny. Next to her is the simple question: Are you beach body ready?
The question is almost immediately followed by the introduction of “the weight loss collection”. As if to suggest you probably are not beach body ready, and that clearly the step to remedy that involves losing weight.
After sitting in a subway surrounded by the body-shaming-for-profit ads one too many times, and walking by a gigantic, skyscraper-sized version of the ad on 42nd Street, next to Times Square – and staring up in shock – I decided to investigate.
Armed with accessories my body loves to take to the beach (a snorkel, a beach ball, goggles) – accessories that indeed give my body a great sense of beach-readiness – I headed to the foot of the gargantuan Times Square ad on Friday morning. I asked passers by what they thought. Perhaps, after all, I was the only New Yorker worried about my perfect 13-year-old cousin becoming a woman in this kind of world.
‘This ad makes me feel less beach-body ready’
Sherrie Griffith, an 18-year-old New Yorker who is getting ready to attend college (not the beach) in the fall, looked up at the massive neon yellow image featuring the white Barbie-meet-Iggy-Azalea-lookalike figure – henceforth “Godzilla-Barbie” – and took a minute to think.
“I know we both have different shapes. I have more of a gut than her,” she said grabbing her midriff.
“This ad makes me feel less beach body ready because we are in a different position. She’s that,” Griffith said pointing upwards. “I am that,” she said, pointing at herself.
Griffith said she was not sure whether she was beach body ready. She initially confided she wasn’t, and then settled on unsure. (Griffith is beautiful, and I told her so.)
‘My body is always beach ready. All I need is a swimsuit.’
Darlene Watler’s body is ready to go to the beach, she declared.
“If you don’t want to look at my body while I am at the beach, then I don’t care.”
The 50-year-old, who works in customer service, appeared excited at the prospect of getting beach-prepped.
“A bathing suit … I’ll get my hair done. Maybe wear a little makeup. That’s all I need!”
‘This ad reminds me I am not beach body ready, and I am sad.’
Emelie Nasman, a 28-year-old teacher from Sweden, said she was rushing by the ad and preferred not to think about it too much.
Why not?
“The answer to the question … It’s no,” she said. “No. I don’t feel beach body ready. This ad reminds me of that.”
She added this kind of ad would never be allowed in Sweden. “People would complain too much about it.”
‘This ad reminds me of how hot I used to be’
Robin McConnell, a 62-year-old teacher from North Carolina, said that once upon a time, she used to look like that, pointing up at Godzilla-Barbie, not without a certain degree of glee.
“It doesn’t bother me because I see so much stuff like that on TV,” she said, referring to weight loss ads and ladies in bikinis.
“If I was 40 years younger I would probably wear something like that,” she mused.
Nowadays, she is a grandmother, and wears a one-piece, but she is happy to watch the next generation look great in bikinis, she said.
“My daughters-in-law look like that.”
‘I am shocked by the close-up on her bikini line’
Mary Dillon, a 75-year-old retired office manager, really did not like the zoom-in to Godzilla-Barbie’s bikini bottom.
“Showing the line where you have to shave and all. I don’t go for that.”
“Women have been showing their boobs – I don’t think they should – since I have been going to the beach. But that part of the crotch: I think it’s indecent.”
Dillon stressed she was open-minded. She didn’t mind the fact that I had cut my hair short, and had dyed it (“if you don’t do it now, then when can you!”) she offered, by way of illustration.
I feel bad for my future daughter
Eduardo Brandt, a 28-year-old lawyer in New York, said he didn’t feel offended by the ad because he was a man, but he realized women may be offended.
His friend and fellow New York lawyer, Federico Rodriguez, 30, said he was so used to seeing near-naked women on billboards, he hardly noticed them anymore. “You become immune,” he said.
The pair were quite blasé about the whole thing, until I asked them what they would think if they had a daughter, and how they would feel if their daughter came across the ad. Then, they became quite articulate.
“I would feel bad because it’s trying to impose a very unreachable standard for women,” Brandt said. “And I would feel bad for her that she would think that she needs to reach that standard to be happy.”
Do they feel beach body ready? No, they both said. Rodriguez ventured he felt a little fat.
‘My mind does not go to the beach when I see this ad, if you know what I mean’
Fouss Sangare, a 38-year-old sports agent visiting from Paris, said if this ad was about getting ready for the beach – literally – then it did a poor job of it.
“If you want to talk about the beach, then you need to have a beach in the ad,” he said.
“Here I am not projecting the beach. I am a man. When I see this body, my mind does not go to the beach.”
Where does it go to?
“I am a man. My mind is not going to the beach.”
What do you mean?
“I am not going to spell it out.”
Pity.
‘Someone asked me whether I was the girl in the ad, and then touched me, uninvitingly’
Charlotte Sunnen, a 25-year-old designer from Switzerland, was at first flattered when a man approached her on 42nd Street, in close proximity to the Godzilla-Barbie ad, and asked her whether she was the model on the giant billboard.
“It made me feel good. It means that my own perception of my body is wrong. I am too tough on myself,” she said.
“It’s the kind of body I am trying to reach, but always falling short. When you see that, it’s very difficult to enjoy your own body when this is your idea of perfection.”
But then, she said, the man who asked her whether she was Godzilla-Barbie touched her arm, without permission. He added that he loved walking down the street and seeing naked women on billboards, Sunnen recounted.
“It’s a free country! God Bless America,” he told her as he left.
Shortly after hopping into his car, parked on 42nd Street, he honked his horn.
“He was disgusting,” she said.
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