Vespa Ads

[brigid]

I've wanted a Vespa for years. Something that's small, easily maneuverable, and gets good gas mileage and looks super cute. What's not to love about it? Sadly, Chicago has crap winters and I haven't wanted to shell out money for a vehicle I can only use about 4 months a year.

There's another reason I haven't seriously looked into buying a Vespa, and that's because I'm fat. Like a lot of fat people, I'm paranoid about breaking things with my immense, ungodly bulk. Will floors support me? Chairs? Suspension bridges? Ladders? Sidewalk grates? Back porches? There's a few reasons for my fear, ranging from people constantly telling me since a fairly slender childhood that I was fatter than the moon and thus absolutely abnormal and not allowed to use tire swings, roller skates, and stuff like that for fear of breakage to falling through a back porch that was riddled with dry rot. I was five. Few five year olds are heavy enough to bust through a wooden porch by simple virtue of being superfat. But I'd been told so often that I was a fatty fatty fat fat that I figured I was just such a fucking porker that normal structures weren't enough to support me.

Thanks, adults in my life, for making a five year old so self conscious about her weight that she assumed wooden porches couldn't support her immensity. That was totally awesome of you.

Armed with that baggage, I've wondered seriously if a Vespa was the right vehicle for me. Could it support me without the seat springs breaking? I mean, just because countless bicycle seats have withstood my girth doesn't mean that a Vespa seat would! Would the motor be able to ferry both the weight of the scooter AND myself? A slightly more sensible question and one, it seems, with an answer of yes. Existing Vespas are pretty powerful and could totally tote me around. Even if I had groceries or books or cinder blocks as cartage.

So what's up with these ads?

The tagline, if you can't read it (and if you click on the small images they link to larger images) says "The most powerful Vespa ever." Uhm. Ok? So that means... superfat people can now use them? Fatty Boom Batties can now balance precariously upon a Vespa and tootle away to freedom, the Vespa able to transport even their planetary bulk?

Or are these ads aimed at slender people. "Imagine! If someone who weighed THIS much can use our Vespa and have it still be able to go... won't YOU go even faster? Oh, the power!"

I don't know.

The people photographed in these ads are out doing stuff and living life. There's a very well dressed fat man at a bar or something. He looks like a successful businessman. There's trendily dressed fat woman with amazing shoes at what looks to be a trendy specialty grocery store. She's so confident in herself that her big fat arms (OH NOES WOBBLY BITS) are bare. There's a snuggling couple gazing out at a body of water... a lake? the sea? he's well dressed. So is she, although exposing more skin... fat wobbly skin that hasn't been photoshopped and smoothed to high heaven.

These fat folks look like people I know. They look, further, like me... only more stylish, more trendy, more affluent. This is a life I could aspire to. They are alive and social and having fun. And it's rare that you see fat people in advertising doing so. So is this a positive ad? Is this an ad targeting an under served fat demographic? Or is it a form of fat shaming: "You are so fucking fat that you need a special, extra powerful engine to haul you wheezily along, lardy." "It doesn't matter how much money you have or how nicely you dress, you are so deathly fat that normal conveyances cannot handle your gargantuan bulk." "You are an outsider and don't belong."

I'm inclined to think it's the latter. That, like the Brazilian Yogurt Ads that use beautiful, sexy fat women shot in artistic and beautiful ways, the thrust of the ad is that fat don't fly. It's not sexy, it's not appealing, and it's not normal. If you're fat, you're an undesirable freak and nobody wants anything to do with you. Go eat some fucking yogurt and then get on your Rascal and be fat someplace else.