I’m Sooo Hungry. Ice Cream. French Fries.

This ad for a diet pill is also a modern dance performance with talking.

There’s something about this ad that just gets me. On the one hand, it’s kind of funny, but on the other hand it’s very real, but in a silly way? It begins with an overhead shot of many real-life regular-sized women who are also actresses and performers, kneeling and crouching and coming together to make the two hemispheres of a brain. Normal and fine:

They are all wearing sensible flats and purple knee-length dresses with their hair pulled back and neatly gathered because they are women of a certain age and size and they would like to be respectful while also feminine but not overtly so. The voiceover smartly asks, but rhetorically, “Did you know that two areas of your brain can make it hard to lose weight?” I don’t know whether I knew whether it was two areas specifically, but the juxtaposition of these words with that image of the two “sides” of the brain makes it seem like what they’re saying is that BOTH parts of the brain make it hard, i.e., the whole brain make it hard to lose weight? Well yes duh of course. Brains make everything hard, particularly the things you want very badly. Or perhaps they mean two specific regions? It is not entirely clear.

AND THEN A FOOD CRAVING HITS! The narrator clarified for us she means two specific areas of the brain (presumably not in a phrenology kind of way but who knows, no one really understands the brain). The first one is the hunger center, represented here by a woman who pops up to tell us, perhaps too seductively, “I’m sooo hungry.” She delivers the line disinterestedly and almost lustily, which paired with the deadness in her eyes and the fact that she blinks halfway through her delivery makes her look and sound like she might as well be telling you she’s soooo horny:

The other section of the brain, we’re told, is the reward system, where parts of your brain sit up and say the things they want. “Ice cream,” says one. “French fries,” coos another.

To be honest, ice cream doesn’t look or sound like she cares about ice cream, like she is one of those people who’s like, “desserts are just not my thing.” But French fries has a big open smile, and a wideness to her eyes that says something like, “French fries are the only thing in this world that make me feel the warm and fuzzies.”

Next, they undo their brain formation and make a big 4 and a big X to show you that patients who take this medication apparently lose up to four times as much weight taking this medication that just diet and exercise alone.

And that’s the end of the dance performance. The rest of the commercial shows you how this medication can help you can have a nice life where you can say no to chocolate cake at the end of a meal, which I would like to fact-check: 1) it’s a LOT easier to resist temptation in situations where you’re around your peers who are physically seated across from you for the sole purpose of watching you eat and asking you questions at all the wrong times, and 2) who wants a piece of cake that’s just floating around on some guy’s tray, looking to be adopted by some moron who doesn’t care if the cake has been sitting out and might be stale? I want my cake freshly cut, and I’d prefer to eat it in private, thanks.

Anyway, next time you’re hungry, ask yourself: is it the hungry sex lady talking or the hypnotized french fry lady? It’s gotta be one of the two.