Current Most Annoying Commercial

So there’s this line of commercials for a no-calorie sweetener called Truvia that drive me completely up the wall. I’m going to link to one in particular, but with a warning that this jingle will not leave my mind and that’s part of the reason the campaign makes me so mad, so know what you’re getting into. Thankfully this post came up in a quick google search to not only confirm I’m not the only one who hates this, but to give me a transcript for those who don’t want the jingle stuck in their head. Thanks!

I loved you sweetness

but you're not sweet, you made my butt fat.

You drove me insane,

self-control down the drain.

We're over I'm so done with that.  

I found a new love,

a natural true love

 that comes from a little green leaf.  

Zero calorie guilt free

no artificiality,

my skinny jeans zipped in relief

it's name is truvia

I had no idea

no more sprinkling my coffee with grief.

Truvia: Honestly Sweet.

Possibly the worst part is that I like the rhyme scheme enough to break up the text this way. It’s a very clever little song, and I hate it.

First thing: what is the “self-control down the drain” supposed to be? It shows her eating an entire piece of cake, albeit kind of fast. Is her mistake supposed to be in wolfing it down in a few bites? In finishing an entire piece (gasp!)? In eating cake to begin with? I don’t know, but as someone with a history of binge-eating episodes, even if the commercial never intended to bring up that idea (which I’m sure it did, as of course all we fatties binge) I felt the experience very trivialized. I’m going to write about that experience another day – I’m still on vacation, and in too good a mood this week to bring that back up.

But even more than the idea that I should feel guilty for eating real sugar because it will make me fat, there’s something about the metaphor of sugar as a bad boyfriend that….well, I can’t find a more technical way to say this, but icks me out.

The commercial sets a dichotomy between real sugar – who seems sweet but actually hurts the singer and was psychologically abusive – and Truvia, who puts her back to “normal”. For some reason, that’s the thing that I hate most about the commercial. There are others in the line that focus more on the sugar aspect, and they’re still annoying but not so creepy.

Sugar is not abusive.

Eating things made with real sugar does not in and of itself make you fat. And eating fake sugar doesn’t in and of itself make you thin. And frankly, gaining a pant size is not at all the same thing as being emotionally abused.

It’s more of this weird advertising correlation between sweets and relationships when they market to women. It’s just weird. And it’s so blatant. Really, Truvia, I promise that women who really binge, women who are actually fat, even women who are as thin as your model there, don’t treat sugar like they treat a significant other. It’s creepy. Stop it.