“Skinny Girls Don’t Have Oomph!”: Vintage Weight Gain Ads

by Intern Grace Wielebinski

Living in a generation of Photoshop, fat-shaming, and stick-thin models, it sometimes seems nearly impossible to imagine a time when “skinnywas a bad word. That’s why we couldn’t help but wonder if we’d stumbled into some sort of alternate universe when we discovered these vintage advertisements for weight gain. Even though these (admittedly hilarious) taglines were still putting too much emphasis on weight in relation to self-worth (the company “Wate-On” claims “if you want to be popular, you can’t afford to be skinny,” in one of their ads), we’d be lying if we said we didn’t find the idea of coveting a different kind of body type refreshing. What do you think of these retro ads?

 

Image source Retronaut.com

 

 

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