Call Slimming Illusions today!

I'm sure everyone has seen them. Ads in the newspaper for slimming centres, promising that if you go for their sessions, you will lose God knows how many pounds/kilos/inches with little or no effort. And they will display these Before and After pictures of their so-called 'successful cases'. The ladies in the 'After' pics of course look much slimmer than in their 'Before' pics. Now, whether or not these slimming techniques actually work, I don't know and I highly doubt they do, but that's not my gripe. The thing that I bugs me about these ads are those photos. Take for example, this photo I ripped off the website of a certain well-known slimming centre:

I notice in a majority of these ads, there are a few common traits, as shown in the example above:
1) In the Before photo, the woman's body is fully frontal towards the camera. In the After photo, they are usually turned sideways
2) In the Before photo, the woman has her arms resting straight down beside her. In the After photo, the woman is almost always having their hands on their hips, behind their back, or just doing something other than being lifeless logs hanging at her side.
3) In the Before photo, the woman is dressed in the probably the most unflattering clothes she can find. In the After photo, she is dressed in a really hot outfit that flaunts all her 'new' curves.
4) The woman's hairstyle is different, usually much nicer and flattering in the After photo compared to the Before photo.
5) In some ads (though not all), the woman in the Before pic is not smiling. Of course, in the After photo, she is beaming radiently.

Basically, the women in the Before photo is always made out to look as fat and unattractive as possible, but in the After photo, they re made to pose, smile and wear great clothes. Far as I'm concerned, that is pretty much false advertising... if they want to show the actual results of their slimming program, they should make the women do exactly the same pose, wear exactly the same clothes, have exactly the same hairstyle. But they don't. So basically, even if the women didn't really slim down much at all after these slimming sessions, these little advertising tricks can make them appear like they have a shrunk a heckuva lot more than in actuality. And just to prove my point, I decided to do a little demonstration using...who else... me! >:)

This is a picture of me doing the typical slimming ad Before photo pose.

Eww. Bleah. Ack. Double ack. Triple ack! This pic does nothing but supersize my already larger-than-I-would-like hips and arms and face. If I were to put this up on any one of those networking sites I've joined (but don't really know what to do with), all the guys would take one look and flee in the other direction. Note, also, that the camera was positioned slightly below the tummy level, so the slightly bottom-up camera angle adds to the whole unflattering look. I *sarspect* that some slimming centres also tend to take their customers' Before photos at a similar angle, in order to exaggerate the unflattering features of the female body. Heck, if a supermodel were to pose like this, I'm sure she would look totally not hot as well.





Now here I am doing the typical slimming ad After photo pose, and the camera positioned slightly higher than before.

Now if I were to post THIS photo up online, I guarantee I'd be getting flirts and messages from all sorts of unknown guys, saying things like "You're so beautiful, I forgot my punchline." (I actually got this message recently after joining Facebook. Sorry dude, couldn't help laughing my head off! :P). Obviously, I look a heckuva lot hotter in this pic than the monstrosity that came just before. And I took this pic right after taking the one before! The exact same person, but just two different poses can have dramatically different appearances. And this is while I was wearing the same clothes too... if I had taken the Before pic wearing my baggiest t-shirt and shorts, I'd look even more like a walking potato sack.... So this pic just goes to show a few things:

1) A not-so-hot person such as myself, wearing the right clothes and having the right style can still look pretty hot.
2) Carrying yourself with confidence significantly increases the hotness factor.
3) Camera angles help maketh a person look hot..... or not hot.
4) Don't trust all them slimming centre ads coz' they use these same techniques to fooleth you!
5) Carol is such a poser.

Yeah, I threw that last one in for fun. But anyway, seeing how it can be quite simple to make a convincing slimming Before and After pics, I wondered if I ever started my own slimming centre, what would my advertisement/flyer look like? And of course, I have the answer below (left click the pic to see the larger version)... >:D


P.S.: My blog is now open to comments to anyone again, including anonymous commenters... I decided to limit the comments to Blogspot users only for a while coz' of a certain no-brainer who was posting very un-family friendly comments.... but it's been quiet again which hopefully means he gave up bugging me and crawled back into whatever hole he came out of. So anyhow, comments are welcome, whether positive or negative (in the form of constructive criticism). Of course, nasty comments will be deleted...or if I'm in the mood, will be dissected and picked apart sentence by sentence by yours truly just for the fun of highlighting the idiocy of whoever posted them. Cheers!