Recent onslaught of dieting commericals

It's driving me NUTS. And pissing me off in a major way.

I figured out today that it's probably because of the holidays - people feel guilty about enjoying Thanksgiving and Christmas, then New Years offers a reason to make resolutions. I don't know for sure, but my guess would be 'to lose X lbs' is the number one most popular resolution, at least in the United States.

Being the capitalistic society we are all these gyms and fad diets and diet pills attack those resolutions like starving hyenas. When just chilling out and watching some TV today, I counted during the commercial break. Four out of the eight commercials were directly related to weight loss. Two of the remaining four were food-related in some way or another.

So we're talking a 75% of all the commercials we're watching telling us, either subliminally or outright, that we are fat and need to lose weight.

Aside from the dramatic before and after shots, the glamourous supermodels holding coffee can sized bottles of heart-destroying diet pills, there were ads featuring images of morbidly obese people or cartoons of skinny women getting larger and larger over a matter of seconds. After a while I'd had enough of listening to the commercials and put them on mute but you still can't escape the messages. All it did was minimize the onslaught of insulting product hooks. The worst part is that you can't even change the channel, since most channels have commercials on around the same times!

Now, yes, many times people gain weight around the holidays. A few weeks ago the commercials all featured these glorious feasts and tables of happy, skinny, smiling people gorging themselves. Here in America, food is an enourmous part of any celebration and the winter holidays are almost nothing but food. Even those commercials capitalizing on our sense of goodwill and prosperity guilt were often all about how we rich people have too much food and others need our donations.

But don't we like enjoying the food, if just once a year? Do we have to be made to feel guilty over having just that one time a year to relax and give ourselves a break about food and body guilt?

I hate this country sometimes. The past few days have just been especially galling.