Analogue Chic

Am I just being sensitive and cantankerous?

Or is this the most offensive "lifestyle" brand you've ever seen?

I opened my inbox to find a holiday promotional newsletter from Cafepress, the site where you can add your image to t-shirts, coffee mugs, and bumperstickers.  Apparently, they have Bethenny Frankel of reality TV fame as their holiday-gift-giving spokesperson, and she was featured with a branded onesie for her infant daughter.

Since her days on The Apprentice and Real Housewives of New York, Frankel has wasted no opportunity in building her brand and marketing everything from exercise videos to margaritas, particularly her Skinnygirl line.

Skinnygirl is the name of my line of nutritious products and recipes, and I hope to raise Bryn to value a healthy lifestyle as I do.

I respect her business sense, I really do.  I don't know her personally, so I don't know what kind of depth or intention is behind her products, but, "gather ye millions while ye may."

I do, however, seriously question how much she is paying her PR people.

But then again, maybe it's just me.

I went through 25 pages of Google results, and found not a single blog post or article in a feminist publication critiquing the moniker "Skinnygirl".

Newsflash: we have not yet evolved as a society where eating disorders are a thing of the past.  She claims to be cracking the foundation of the diet industry, but it seems clear to me that she's adding another brick to the fortress that imprisons women and girls (and boys and men) in self-loathing and obsessive thinness.

From the National Institute of Mental Health: "The mortality rate among people with anorexia has been estimated at 0.56 percent per year, or approximately 5.6 percent per decade, which is about 12 times higher than the annual death rate due to all causes of death among females ages 15-24 in the general population."

My gift is being able to tell people what they should be doing.

She claimed her powers of persuasion in an article with Entrepreneur.com

She even gives details on how to reinvent "girls' night in" from "ladies wearing green facial masks and weeping about how no one loves them" into "nicely-dressed women and a little man-bashing, combined with fashion and beauty tips, a little spirituality, and getting down and dirty with cocktails and dancing."  She tells you what to wear, what men think of you at the bar, and how to decorate your house.

Considering the 25 pages of Google results praising her books, videos, and liquor, I can imagine the number of women who are also putting "get skinny by any means necessary" on their to-do list, because Bethenny says so.

The only negative press I found had to do with her rapid post-pregnancy weight loss.

"The 'Housewife' is doing everything in her power to deny the maelstrom of allegations against her. As she told the New York Post, 'My message to women is to be comfortable where you are, to not binge at any point in your life, to eat a balanced diet with indulgences and to go at your own pace.'" (via the Huffington Post )

Something smells fishy in the House of Skinny, and I think that should raise some serious doubts about how "comfortable" and "balanced" Frankel's message really is.