The Weight of Words: The "Real Food" Ad

The “Real Food” commercial that aired during Super Bowl LX was disappointing at best, but for me, straight up infuriating. Heartbreaking. Hurtful.

There is something horribly ironic in Mike Tyson serving as a spokesperson for ‘real food’ and health. Given his controversial public history and past actions, I find it difficult to accept him as a moral or health authority on what Americans should be consuming.

I’m done getting mad over the ignorance of people claiming that everyone should swear off processed foods, and I’m sure you’ve heard this before. I don’t need to add to the voices that are explaining why avoiding processed foods is neither necessary nor possible for most people. Good, let’s skip that part, and let me tell you what I’m NOT done getting mad over. 

In the first moments of the commercial, Mike Tyson refers to his past self as “fat and nasty” and then goes on to say he had “so much self hate when [he] was like that.” My heart sank when I heard his words. Fat and nasty? Self-hate caused by fatness? Feelings I could definitely (and unfortunately) relate to. He even declares that his fatness made him want to kill himself, another statement that I’d be lying to say I’d never claimed myself. But these are things I am fighting to unlearn – every day: actively, intentionally fighting, because they are devastating – so hearing them stated by a national icon is incredibly disheartening. 

Here’s the thing: this isn’t about me, and this isn’t about Mike Tyson.

By saying these things about himself, but only himself in a larger, yet somehow lesser, body, he is pointing a finger at every person our world calls fat. “You are nasty – you should hate yourself. Maybe even desire to kill yourself,” Tyson says.

As someone who lives in a body that most people would consider fat, it was really painful to hear those words. See, I fought really hard to live in this body, because living in the smaller one I once inhabited was killing me. The body that society deems superior, belonging to a harder working, more disciplined, surely healthier and altogether better person, was a body that I had to literally starve myself to achieve. 

I know I am not alone in this; nearly 10% of the American population experiences an eating disorder in their lifetime. It is messages and advertisements like these that make it clear why. Our world teaches us that fat is shameful, and to be in a fat body is to be less than. It is horrifying that Mike Tyson can get on national television and rattle off the words “fat” and “nasty” like they are synonyms, reasons for hate and degradation, and no one bats an eye. 

I have to consciously choose, each and every day, whether I am going to live in a body that could be considered fat, or let myself die in a body that isn’t. Today the answer is clear for me, but it wasn’t always, and I know it isn’t for everyone. So, yes, when I saw this commercial, it hurt. Call me sensitive. Say I’m overreacting – but I don’t think so. 

Talking about any human body in a way that degrades the actual person living inside of it is simply unacceptable. And so, to every person who thinks that messages like these are “making America healthy again,” do better. And to anyone whom this ad made to feel “less than,” remember this: the size of your body tells the world literally nothing about you other than the size of your body. 

And when it comes down to it, it’s only the size of your heart that matters.