PressEthic

Thursday’s New York Times contained what seemed to be a serious examination of “diet doctors” who directly sell untested, and potentially unsafe, diet pills to their weight-conscious patients. At least that’s what I thought.

That’s when I realized it was in the Fashion & Style section, under the headline “A Guide to Weight-Loss Drugs.” Fashion & Style, as in “pink is the new black and diet doctors are the new size 0.”

I didn’t see the print edition, but I’m sure not far away from the article was some Neiman-Marcus ad featuring a 95-pound waif whose stomach hasn’t seen a hamburger since she was 15.

By which, of course, I mean she eats like its her job but has a “high metabolism.”

The Times is getting the advertising dollars but missing the story. If the people who seek these drug treatments are actually obese and their health is at risk, that’s one thing. But far be it from me to surmise that most of the women in a Midtown doctor’s waiting room are just a little pissed they don’t look like that ad. So the story lands in Fashion & Style, the one-stop shop for Prada and amphetamines.

They don’t look like those ads because they can’t. They don’t know they can’t because media don’t bother to tell them. Stories that spell out the dangers of ephedra may get published, but those full-page color ads of bony models wearing the clothes you simply must have for fall aren’t going anywhere.

Why doesn’t anyone do a story about why Kate Moss is still doing coke? It’s addictive, yes. But it’s also keeping her from wanting to super-size everything on McDonald’s menu.

Here’s a personal request from me to The New York Times and every other media outlet that thrusts these ads in my face and then feels compelled to write about ways to score untested, unapproved diet pills:

I - and every other woman I know - have enough problems with my body image. Don’t reinforce them.