This ad’s nothing to moan about

EVERYONE has got their knickers in a twist about a London Underground advert for a protein powder weight-loss supplement, depicting a scantily clad woman and the message: ‘Are you beach body ready?’

The ads has been pulled after a campaign claiming it was sexist and put undue pressure on women to lose weight.

As someone who treats eating disorders, I’m sure you’d expect me to jump on the bandwagon and decry the ad like everyone else. In fact, the outcry irritates me immensely.

When you look at the woman (pictured), she’s not underweight. She looks fit and healthy.

Now compare this to the images of women in fashion, who look emaciated and ill. But it’s far easier to attack a small weightloss company than a giant corporation such as Chanel.

Such a furore achieves nothing meaningful except the boosting of a few egos.

Everyone has a moan, people claim to be offended, there’s a victory when the ad is banned and for a while everyone feels better about themselves.

It’s all about the campaigners — no one else. It’s certainly not helping people with eating disorders or body-image issues. The real issue is that eating disorder treatment is woefully under-funded.

Despite having a mortality rate of nearly a third — yes, nearly one in three people with an eating disorder will die because of it, the highest rate of any mental illness — waiting lists for the specialist psychotherapy required are routinely more than a year long.

That’s if you can even get on a waiting list. Services are so strapped for cash that they have had to raise the threshold so people with anorexia are turned away if they are not deemed to be underweight enough.

Where are the campaigns about that?