A television commercial comes on. A melancholy-looking young woman confesses sadly, "I never thought that I would be a single mother. Everyday I face pressure and isolation, and there is no one to help me." She is kneeling on the floor picking up scattered toys and clothes. Two small children, a boy and a girl, are chasing each other around the living room, emitting piercing screams and shrill laughter. "This racket was driving me crazy, crazy, crazy! I was searching for some way to make myself happy."

"Eventually, I went to..." Cut to a new scene, bright and colorful, and we watch the young woman-her smiling face filled with hope-pushing open the door to a health and beauty center. "Here I become beautiful, and when I go home I can face them [she is holding the two children] with a refreshed outlook. Right?" Cute childish voices respond "Right!" "What happened to Mom?" The kids respond: "She's become beautiful!"

At the end, the three of them say in unison (in English), "Trust me, you can make it!" The commercial ends in a blizzard of brilliantly smiling faces.

This commercial for a weight-loss and beauty center, combining "real life testimony" with the sensitive issue of the single mother, attracted a great deal of attention when it came out in the middle of 1995. Several months later, let's hear what Lin Man-ping, the woman featured in the advert, has to say.

Newspaper adverts often include claims like "fast results," "low prices, " and "a well-rounded upper body and a graceful lower body." Often pictures of women with alluring bodies are included.

Fit for the health center treatment

"I still feel quite positive, even after all this time since I made the commercial," says Lin, who has kept up going to the center two or three times a week. She gets a facial or a massage or spends time under the infrared light every time she goes, allowing her to release the tensions from facing clients all day. For her, the beauty center is where she "gets into a new mood and puts on a happy face" before going home to face another day at the front.

But what the portrayal in the advertisement did not touch upon were the personal advantages Lin had from the outset. She has worked in a high-paying job in the insurance industry for four years, so she can afford to lay out NT$10-20,000 per month to "pamper" herself without feeling bad about it. Her sister does the books in one of the branches of the center Lin goes to, which is one of the more prestigious such firms, so Lin doesn't have to worry if she needs any help with anything. Moreover, before even entering the beauty center, Lin-at 162 centimeters tall and 55 kilograms-was already the normal weight for her height. She didn't have much body fat, nor is there any genetic tendency to obesity in her family history. These are all reasons why she could relatively easily sculpt a shapely figure and advance toward her goal of "a perfect body line" at 47 kilos.

Despite this, she still feels that her tummy, which has been through two Cesarean sections, is not tight enough, and she is afraid that once she stops going, her body weight will shoot back up, so she doesn't dare to be careless. "Everyone knows that exercise is something you have to keep at. It's the same for weight loss and beauty," says Lin. But the vast majority of weight reduction customers have a far less sensible attitude, they expect to "spend money once, and see the results for life."

There are many examples of women like Lin Man-ping who feel that their money has been well spent. But beautification and weight-loss is an extremely complicated and personalized process. Another variable is the uneven quality of the many new operators who have sprung up to meet the demand that has come along with economic prosperity, and there are traps everywhere. There are operators who put out a lot of different hooks to catch a wide variety of unsuspecting consumers. Many women who act on impulse without understanding very clearly what they are getting into end up "thinning out their wallets without losing any weight." All they get for their cash is frustration.

It seems that beauty-loving women always see themselves ten pounds thinner in their inner mirrors. But if you have to rely on outside help to lose pounds, inevitably your wallet will end up a lot thinner as well.

You too can be thin?

Statistics show that this year alone the Consumers' Foundation has received thousands of complaints and appeals related to the weight-loss and beauty industry. And on radio call-in programs you can frequently hear from people who feel they have been cheated. Putting all these individual cases together, it is not difficult to discover that in real life there is a high possibility that the easy path to beauty and a perfect body portrayed in commercials will be out of reach.

Wang Wei-wen (pseudonym) is 39 years old, 158 centimeters tall, and weighs 58 kilograms. She is an ordinary career woman, married and with a family. Usually very upbeat, over the last year, without really knowing why, she began to fret. Here is a typical scene: She sits in front of the TV at 8:00 watching the drama serial. A weight reduction ad comes on the screen, she gets a look on her face like she is having an internal battle, and finally she puts down the snack food in her hand. "Eternal youth, an eternal figure," the TV proclaims. "Pursue beauty, and refuse betrayal." "When you are older, you should pamper yourself even more." Unconsciously, she lightly rubs the "spare tire" she has accumulated around her waist. lt's been a big concern of hers that she has never been able to dispel since the birth of her youngest five years previously.

Recently, she saw a new ad, in which two terms hit her right where it hurts:"Frumpy housewife" and "colorless career woman." She wondered: Isn't that me to a T? She finally made her decision. After going through the advertisements in the newspapers, she took NT$30,000 out of her bank account, built up her nerve, and went to a company that portrayed itself as "high class but not expensive," and promised quick results. The trainer helped her set up a training program, with a budget of more than NT$20,000, with the goal being to sculpt a figure and lose three to five kilos. She signed the contract, at peace with herself.

The first time that she went, she was put under the infrared light, which is said to able to soften and melt fat. Then she was placed in a "high-frequency" machine and shaken around to break up fat cells. She felt the hand of the beautician rubbing her lower abdomen just like kneading dough. She knew that someone was concerned about her figure, and would help her take off inches, which certainly felt wonderful.

Unfortunately, there was no time to savor this wonderful sensation. Next, the beautician took out some bottles and jars, explaining that these are "health products designed to go along with the program." Wang suddenly felt alarmed. Everyone of these items to be eaten or rubbed on cost an amount that made her tongue hang out. The whole set came to more than NT$10,000. The beautician kept up a steady sales pitch. "This will balance the pH value in your body." "This one will tighten up your skin." "This is just like liquid oxygen. If you drink it, it will stimulate your metabolism." Worst of all, "If you only use the equipment, you won't get very good results. You have to use these health products that match your program in order to get the results you want."

As Wang mumbled that these seemed too expensive and that she had no money budgeted for them, the girl's face darkened and she retorted, "This is the most famous European brand, and the price we are asking is not expensive for something like this! Mrs. Chang, who was here right before you, ordered several sets to give to her friends." Wang could see the look of disdain in the eyes of the girl, and the muscles that had just been relaxed tightened up again.

"Good looks result from piling up money." Wang Wei-wen now understands what these words really mean. She initially came here to "pamper" herself and "to be more slim and more confident." But now she was feeling aggrieved, as well as frightened: "If I don't buy these, and it all comes to nothing, then won't I have wasted the more than NT$20,000 NT I've already spent? That would have been enough to pay the tuition for my child to attend a whole year of bilingual kindergarten!"

It is claimed that sleeping under this "metabolic adjustment instrument" can help break up and expel fat. But the medical profession remains skeptical.

Expensive by the pound

Wang didn't know that quite a few women get "scared off" by the hard sell after one or two visits and quit on their own. No matter how much they toughened themselves to resist these sales pitches time after time, in the end they would have give in, and their costs would multiply after a few visits. Either way-quit or cough up-it is virtually impossible to prove any wrongdoing on the part of the business, and there is little hope of getting your money back.

She didn't know that the company could afford to advertise such low prices because these were just "to get customers in the door." Indeed, there is hardly enough money there to pay the trainers, who are really working hard. The trainers exhaust themselves, and end up with pulled muscles, tendonitis, and other occupational injuries. So where is the profit in all of this? Its in those expensive imported "health care products," or in the few "special sessions" for which people must pay extra. Some of the more voracious operators make as much as 70% of their profits from these items that never get mentioned in the advertisements.

"To buy or not to buy? And how much will I have to spend?" "Will I really lose five kilograms? Isn't it a little foolish to be spending tens of thousands of NT dollars per kilogram?" "Why is it others seem to lose weight with so little effort, but I never seem to be able to lose an ounce? Why am I so unlucky?" There are dark, secret thoughts like this going through the small private rooms at weight-loss centers every day. Of course, if you realize that you can't give up fine food, you may have to just accept your fate, violate the prime directive-to cut back on calories-and let your money go down the drain.

What' s deceptive is that one obviously has to eat less in order to lose weight, but the advertisements don't make this point very clear. The pictures you see on the screen are of clients laying comfortably here and there, with the nimble, graceful hands of the trainer gliding over them. All around them is the latest in imported equipment for "dissolving fat," "body-sculpting," or "metabolic regulation."

"If only they had told me right off that everything would be useless if I simply ate a little more than they allow.... If that's the case, what's the point of all that expensive equipment anyway?" is a complaint made by many people who appeal to the Consumers' Foundation to try to help get their money back.

This woman was full-bodied when younger, but much slimmer after giving birth to two kids. She lost the weight by controlling her diet on her own. （photo courtesy of Lee Su-ling）

The myth of lazy weight reduction

Then what are these devices for? It seems they are about the same as a steambath. They can help you relax, dispel exhaustion, and promote perspiration. But the fat that you wanted to get rid of in the first place remains completely unmoved. This is because the structure of fat molecules is much more stable than that of bodily fluids. The only way to really get rid of fat is to get up and do aerobics-to accelerate the heart rate and breathing, thus bringing large amounts of oxygen into your cells.

In other words, "it's easy to get rid of water, hard to get rid of fat." After a session on a machine, you might very well be half a kilo lighter, but the weight goes right back on when you drink water the next day. After a period of time on this meaningless seesaw, many women check their weight several times a day, end up exhausted both physically and mentally, and the image of the weight-loss center continues to decline.

"People are also crazy about being skinny in the West as well, but most businesses there advertise their techniques as dieting and exercise. But in Taiwan, operators have taken advantage of the distaste Chinese women have for exercise. Advertisements recklessly promote a myth of lazy weight loss, proclaiming that you can 'just lay there and casually burn off fat,' or engage in 'passive exercise,'" says dietician Chao Szu-tzu of the Adventist Hospital in Taipei. She warns, "If fat could really be melted away by infrared light, rubbed away by massages, carried away by belts, or expelled by metabolic accelerators, would obesity be the most serious 'post-industrial disease' in the advanced nations? These weight-loss operators would have been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine long ago!"

"The equipment serves a purely supplementary function, and by itself can't really lead to effective weight loss," admits the public relations officer at one beauty center. When you look closely at the promotional campaigns that declare that the center uses the "N great weight-loss techniques," you find that they're always the old familiar ways-diet, psychology, exercise, and behavioral modification-with nothing magical about them. And they don't require any extreme techniques or fancy equipment. "The problem is that 'the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.' If there were no trainer supervising them, people couldn't lose weight on their own," says the PR rep, defending the value of the centers.

There is no medical basis for "lazy weight loss." But still the myth of "rapid weight reduction" circulates unabated. "Weight obsession syndrome" and "figure obsession syndrome" are worsening. When you look for the reason, the most direct cause is advertising.

According to Survey Research Taiwan, last year the beauty and weight-loss industry spent more than NT$1.5 billion on promotion. Two of the most famous companies were right at the head of the list as the top advertisers for the year, spending, respectively, NT$340 million and NT$250 million. Given that about 20% of all operating revenues are spent on advertising, and customers dish out NT$50,000 each to sign up, that means total operating revenues are NT$75 billion, meaning that there are well over l00,000 weight-loss memberships per year!

The advertising situation this year is about the same. When you flip through the newspaper, there is always at least one half-page promotion for weight-loss centers every day. All of them claim to have the latest in imported equipment and weight-reduction techniques. Meanwhile, through prime time TV, waves of advertising percolate into the brain, constantly telling women how important it is to keep their figures. There's no need to ask the operators where their money comes from. Anyone can imagine a steady stream of women who want to be beautiful, urgently traipsing from one center to the next like ants as one failure follows another.

The beauty myth

Nevertheless, like funhouse mirrors, what you see in these ads depends upon how you look at them. Thus a teenage girl who likes singing idol Yang Lin-who appears in a commercial-may just unconditionally accept the idea that "thin is beautiful." Scholars of culture and aesthetics may find the process by which society redefines a "beautiful woman" to be fascinating. Feminists may see the ads as "reactionary attempts by capitalism and paternalism to turn back liberation of women." And doctors, perhaps the most qualified to define "overweight," will worry that these images are distorting women's views of body shape and health.

Every era, East and West, has had its own standard of beauty. Sometimes the "full-figured" look is in favor, when "fat is beautiful." At other times, agonized women have had their feet wrapped into tiny three-inch "golden lotuses." There have been times when large breasts were fashionable, and others when women were required to wrap their chests and bind their breasts flat. There is no end to the variations on standards of beauty, and beauty-seeking women have had little choice but to experiment with their own bodies and make sacrifices to pursue their goal.

It is especially ironic that Yang Guifei, the woman whose beauty, legend has it, caused the downfall of the Tang dynasty, was plump and sturdy, with pendulous breasts and a wide bottom. And in a famous painting of the Goddess Diana bathing which hangs in the Louvre, one cannot help but notice that the subject has rather pronounced buttocks. And yet here we are today, after 1000 years of progress, in a wealthy society in which, moreover, women are said to have much increased their autonomy, and we are looking at a return to a standard of beauty calling for "wispy waists and tiny tushes." The modern woman will seemingly suffer any indignity to achieve the dream of a svelte body, recalling that day of old in which, "The King of Chu loved thin waists, and half the women in his palace starved to death."

Of course, these days we have no King of Chu or palace system to select the finest concubines. Instead, we have omnipresent advertising screaming that we must become skinnier. This causes women to worry, thus creating a demand, and thereby achieving their aim of selling weight-loss products. However, adds Li Hsiu-chu, an associate professor of mass communications at Fujen Catholic University, "True as it is that advertising is a stimulant, the real problem is deeper. If the idea that 'for men money is most important, for women looks are most important' were not so deeply rooted in society, these ads would not be able to take advantage of women to sell them hope of achieving their dreams, and the market would never have developed so quickly."

"Thin is beautiful, slim means success." "Obese women are lazy, useless, and subject to abuse." "Only slim women have class, and can find a good husband or good job." Advertisements hint at all types of underlying beauty myths. Regrettably, every day you can hear these ideas repeated and passed on in conversations. And there is plenty of statistical evidence to show how far the idea that "I must be thin whatever the price" has spread.

The definition of beauty changes over time. Yet don't all of these women -a plump imperial concubine of the Tang dynasty, the slim Lin Tai-yu, the well-muscled Greek goddess Venus, and the streamlined qipao-clad woman-all have something beautiful about them? （Sinorama file photos）

Super slim, super fast

This year Lu Chen-fang, a lecturer at the Chang Geng College of Nursing, did a survey of more than 700 second-year nursing students at nine nursing colleges in northern Taiwan. The survey discovered that fully 87% of those of normal weight (meaning within 10% of the standard weight for their height) and of those who were slightly thin (10-20% below their standard weight) thought themselves to be "too fat." Of these, 47% wanted their weight to be 10-20% lower than the standard weight for their height, and there were even 3.4% who wanted to be 20-30% lower! As far as they are concerned, who cares about the risks of anemia or weakened immunity to disease! Who cares if I have a figure like a washboard! A woman 165 centimeters tall just should not weigh over 45 kilos!

Are you surprised that so many women-even health professionals like nurses-hold such views? Yet it is perhaps even more arresting that women not only want to be very thin, they want to get that way very fast. Four years ago, Hung Chien-teh of the Taipei Municipal Yangming Hospital surveyed more than 800 incoming patients; he found that almost half of them (44%) hoped that they could drop about 30% of their body weight in the miraculous period of less than one month. Now look again at those TV commercials, with their promises of "instant results" and editorial cuts that transform a woman's figure in a flash-you can't help but admire the way these businesses have deftly zeroed in on the innermost desires of many women.

But there are other voices out there. At a conference, many feminists called for "shattering the myth of the hourglass figure"; for "setting a standard of beauty that they expect male chauvinists to come up to"; and for "not putting your efforts into pleasing men, but into competing with men." But in reality, the position of women is complex and subject to dispute. Is there not a reason for getting slim that is also "significant and valuable from a feminist point of view"?

Although aerobics is tiring, kept up over a long time it can really burn fat and give you back a graceful figure. （photo by Vincent Chang）

Who will accompany me?

Perhaps we may take 2l-year-old Chen Shu-li (a pseudonym) as a case in point. This 165-centimeter tall woman was a field hockey player in school, but when she left school and stopped exercising she ballooned all the way to 90 kilograms. She tried everything to lose weight, turning from one cure to the next. She tried every kind of pill, diet plan, and exercise. She even had an allergic skin reaction to the amphetamines in them.

"I really felt inferior and afraid to come in contact with people back then," she recalls. It was especially hard because she had two sisters in her family who never knew what it was like to be obese, and they constantly teased her: "If you don't want to be fat then stop eating!" "Who told you to stuff yourself and then plant yourself on the couch afterwards?" And of course Chen was constantly worried that her boyfriend might no longer want her around.

At the beginning of this year, attracted by an advert, she took the plunge and joined a weight reduction center. At first things didn't go so well, and she continually felt cheated. But after changing centers one after the other, she finally saw a significant reduction in her body weight. Over the course of the year, she lost-in fits and starts-l7 kilos, bringing her weight down to 73 kilograms. Even though her sisters haven't stopped knocking her-"Hey! I never knew you were a woman!"-she now has the self-confidence to wear short, tight black dresses and show a little of her long-hidden figure. Her next goal is to lose 20 more kilograms in the next three months to achieve a "completely willowy" body.

How did she finally succeed? Chen says that she was lucky-she met a very supportive trainer. In the past, amidst ridicule by those around her and suffering from very low self-esteem, she embarked on cycles of binges and deprivation. Only later did she meet a trainer who fully explained the correct principles of diet and nutrition to her. And the key factor behind her successful show of restraint in consumption was the sincere concern and encouragement of the trainer, and the trainer's dedication to Chen's psychological reconstruction.

Weight-loss ads often use fashionably dressed women, but people often forget that the models are "one-in-ten-thousand," and chosen precisely because their figures are exceptional, so ordinary women cannot even aspire to such figures.

Live for yourself, and let yourself live!

"In the weight-loss process, there were intermittent periods of stagnation, where I couldn't lose weight. The more frustrated I became, the greater the pressure was, and the less I thought it possible to go on,"says Chen. "I still remember the time that my boyfriend left me for good. The hurt made me just want to give up; I felt that everything was meaningless. But my trainer gave me good advice, saying that you should do things for yourself, not to make others happy, because you can't count on that, and anyway it's not worth it."

Chen's effort to lose weight only succeeded because she was properly motivated. She broke through psychological barriers, and she developed an understanding of the idea that "I want to live well for myself, and make myself into a more disciplined individual." By the end she had even gained control over her past bad habit of "eating snack food and smoking whenever I felt sad."

Trying to lose weight, Chen has thus far spent well over NT$100,000, money saved up by her dollar by dollar out of her salary. Though one might argue that there are many ways a woman can take good care of herself-like using the money to enjoy a long trip abroad-Chen says she has no regrets. Now that she has gone well down the path to success, she has more and more people supporting her.

Behind the ads, some truthful and others misleading, are many stories-some with happy endings, others much less so. Whether you can see through the traps and be psychologically prepared depends on your own vision.

[Picture Caption]

p.26

Last July, a weight-loss commercial featuring mainland superstar Gong Li set off an advertising war among Taiwanese companies. In fact, Gong Li' s classically voluptuous figure is even more intriguing than the bony bodies typical of models!

p.27

Newspaper adverts often include claims like "fast results," "low prices, " and "a well-rounded upper body and a graceful lower body." Often pictures of women with alluring bodies are included.

p.28

It seems that beauty-loving women always see themselves ten pounds thinner in their inner mirrors. But if you have to rely on outside help to lose pounds, inevitably your wallet will end up a lot thinner as well.

p.29

It is claimed that sleeping under this "metabolic adjustment instrument" can help break up and expel fat. But the medical profession remains skeptical.

p.30

This woman was full-bodied when younger, but much slimmer after giving birth to two kids. She lost the weight by controlling her diet on her own. (photo courtesy of Lee Su-ling)

p.32

The definition of beauty changes over time. Yet don't all of these women -a plump imperial concubine of the Tang dynasty, the slim Lin Tai-yu, the well-muscled Greek goddess Venus, and the streamlined qipao-clad woman-all have something beautiful about them? (Sinorama file photos)

p.34

Although aerobics is tiring, kept up over a long time it can really burn fat and give you back a graceful figure. (photo by Vincent Chang)

p.35

Weight-loss ads often use fashionably dressed women, but people often forget that the models are "one-in-ten-thousand," and chosen precisely because their figures are exceptional, so ordinary women cannot even aspire to such figures.

p.35

Women often worry over every extra inch on their waistlines, But do men have the same concern?

Women often worry over every extra inch on their waistlines, But do men have the same concern?