Funny or Offensive. You decide.

While perusing my favorite celebrity gossip sites, I stumbled onto this video about a "joke" infomercial Jimmy Kimmel recently released on his show. It advertises a fake diet called "The Hottie Body Jim Miracle Diet" where Jimmy eats 4/5 of the food his female guests are eating. The women eat 1/5 of whatever food they want and the result is the beautiful, stick-thin ideal body. He has a slew of celebrity guests including Heidi Klum, Emily Blunt, Scarlett Johansson, and Jessica Biel who each promote this special diet.


At first I thought it was funny until actress Kerry Washington shared: "I can eat whatever I want and still make women want to kill themselves." I was struck by how NOT funny this sketch is. I think Jimmy took it to an extreme, and in light of the recent Eating Disorder Awareness week, it is not funny to tell women that eating 1/5 of their food intake will make them beautiful.


I am also still stuck on that last image in the clip where Jimmy is on a motor chair looking overweight surrounded by the beautiful actresses on his commercial. To me that image reflects a sad reality where men are praised for having healthy appetites while women must refrain from eating 4/5 of their meals to maintain a "beautiful" meaning thin body.


You decide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YoKoKI_2NlQ

(http://www.nypost.com/r/nypost/blogs/

popwrap/201103/IMAGES/15/kimmel.jpg)