Martina Devlin: Hunky Dory ads have given all women one definite goal
The Hunky Dory ads have given all women one definite goal – if they can manage to stop scoffing crisps, fast foods and everything else cooked in oil, they might even end up looking like some of the models featured, writes Martina Devlin
THE art of advertising hinges on persuasion and I've just been won over. As of today, thanks to their zeal for using shapely, provocatively dressed girls in their ads, I'm no longer eating Hunky Dorys or any other snack manufactured by Largo Foods.
I'll never have a body to compare with the models featured in their campaigns if I continue grazing on crisps and salted peanuts. Men will never have lustful thoughts about me. I won't ever experience what it's like to be objectified. How can I even consider myself a woman?
I admit it, I've been a slacker. I convinced myself I could graze on fatty snacks and still maintain a reasonably attractive figure. But the latest model in the Hunky Dorys' poster campaign, who's wearing something approaching a GAA kit but customised to showcase her virtuous eating habits, demonstrates how delusional I've been.
The only way I can look like that girl, and all those other sensational models in teeny-togs with their concave stomachs, wasp waists, toned thighs and pert rears, is to swear off everything cooked in oil. Thank you, Largo Foods, for your selfless campaign to kick my salty snack dependency into touch.
I realise now that if I can't manage to look as sexually available as those girls, people will cross the street to avoid me. Nobody will talk to me, employ me or form a relationship with me. I'll die a lonely old dear covered in cat hairs, and I'll only have myself to blame because I kept on eating crisps.
What Largo Foods is running amounts to a public service multi-media campaign. Nothing less. Its ads spell out how those multi-packs of snacks, thrown casually into trolleys, are standing between us and bootylicious bodies. When I look at images of the Hunky girls, it's as plain as my squidgy bits that I've been munching too freely on the kind of food they only appear to promote.
Frankly, this patriotic Irish manufacturer should get an award for civic duty because of the way it has opened women's eyes -- the gender that does most of the shopping -- to our unhealthy eating patterns. If only other manufacturers followed their lead and put customer welfare above profit margins, what a caring society this would be.
We're always hearing that successful women should be role models for the ones coming behind, and the Hunky girls are certainly inspirational with their zero-tolerance approach to snack foods. Think how healthy the next generation will be if they copy their low-fat diet.
In addition, we can tell by male reaction to the ads -- let's call it largely positive -- that women who look the way these ladies do enjoy a life with the odds stacked in their favour. And you don't get assets like theirs by lounging about with a super-sized container of ready salted on your lap.
One look at them, and I became a convert. They sent me sprinting to the larder on a search-and-destroy mission: no more fatty foods on my shelves.
The Hunkys have given me a goal by showing that if I stop scoffing crisps, I'll be able to borrow a seven-year-old's top and shorts whenever I want to play sports and forget my own kit. How convenient is that?
I'm hoping if I can stick to my resolution, steering clear of all Largo Foods' brands, my vital statistics may improve to the point where the company will consider using me in a photoshoot next year. Obviously I still won't be able to eat its products, but at least I'll make money from not eating them. Exactly like all the other models.
In the meantime, the car repair industry should send thank-you cards to the snack foods' manufacturer. Think of all the cars pranged by men distracted at billboards with the Hunkys lined out on them. The GAA ought to be pretty darn grateful as well -- spectators will be flocking to camogie and ladies' football, now their eyes have been opened to the way players dress. They probably thought female players togged out for comfort and efficiency.
The Largo Foods' team is simply spreading joy throughout the country. Apart from among the people complaining about the gratuitous, crude and -- worst of all -- just plain unimaginative nature of its ads, that is.
I expect the marketing staff are a bit hurt by disparagement about the campaign. Cynics will claim it's free advertising, and suggest they are secretly thrilled by all the attention their deliberately controversial ads have drawn. But some people have a nasty, suspicious streak.
Anyone who dismisses this as reductive Benny Hill advertising doesn't understand the irony of depicting women, who clearly never played the sport they represent, in connection with a product they daren't taste if they want any future work. This is so esoteric, it's high art. Needless to say, any woman who calls the ads degrading is jealous, insecure, overweight or plug ugly. Worse, she is probably a feminist, and so can be reliably described as all of the above. Any man doing likewise is nothing but a wuss sucking up to the sisters.
As for criticism that real sportswomen should have been used: I ask you, how could Largo Foods have featured camogie or Gaelic football players? Everyone knows they're covered in bruises from all that rough and tumble, on account of going out on the pitch to win rather than pose. They'd have to be airbrushed for an ad campaign.
What's that? David Beckham was airbrushed for those billboard posters of him in Emporio Armani pants? I'm appalled. Well, I'm glad to see Hunky Dorys stuck to its principles with real models instead of fake ones who just happen to be able to handle a ball competitively.
I'm so proud of those visionary decision-makers at Largo Foods, I have a suggestion -- gratis -- for the tagline on their next campaign. Instead of 'Proud Supporters of Gaelic Football' they may find 'Proud Supporters of Irish Jobs' proves equally effective, at least on home turf. Not as sexy as girls in togs, but you can't have everything.
