Are we all our own marketers? Randi Zuckerberg says no.

 It’s always funny which articles you read stick with you. While I gravitate toward anything food-centric,  the articles I clip (yes physically clip) from the weekend paper are often either those with writing I admire and want to reread or interviews.  Last weekend, a few parts of an interview with Randi Zuckerberg (sister of Facebook’s CEO) resonated with me.

In a discussion about Facebook (where she no longer works) she said friends would say to her “your life looks so amazing.” She’d reply “I’m a marketer; I’m only posting the moments that are amazing.” The interviewer than commented “that drives people crazy about Facebook- that it turns all of us into marketers.” Randi actually disagreed.

I’ve given a lot of thought to this topic as I’m in the “marketing” stage for my book and it's not my favorite part of the process. While I’m certainly not a social media wallflower: I blog, I tweet, FB and “gram” but it's often not super-focused on me. At a gathering with nutritionist colleagues one RD remarked “when you posted a photo of yourself on Halloween it was nice to see, you only post juices and smoothies.” At first I thought perhaps she wasn’t a juice fan but then I realized it was true. I like to stand back a little. I'm more than happy to talk Foodtrainers or nutrition but you will not see my face plastered on all our materials.

 At lunch with a friend, social media came up (as it often does). We talked about tooting your own horn. I mentioned a certain fitness professional I had to unfollow as the constant flow of selfies and me, me, me was irritating. I wasn’t learning about new workout but just being barraged with abs and boobs.  The conversation shifted to a personality who is building an impressive following and my friend said, “it’s just all about them, it’s relentless. She is never shining the light on someone else’s causes or stepping back.”

And so I think it’s a fine line. Yes, from makeup to media we are all shaping an image. I laugh when, on Instagram, people use the hashtag “no filter” to indicate they haven’t manipulated the color of a photo. “This one is real” they are saying even if they took 100 to get that one. Randi Zuckerberg thought of it in terms of storytelling. Maybe even if it is marketing it should be too blatant. Or perhaps in social media, as in life, it’s more interesting when it isn’t all about us. What do you think?

Are we all marketing ourselves? Where is "real" in all of this? And where is the "this person needs to stop" line?
I find it super ironic that there was no mention of Randi's two new books Dot Complicated "untangling our wired lives" or her children's book Dot in the Times article (who's doing her marketing?). And if you're curious about Dot it's "about a young girl called Dot who discovers the fun of playing outside when her mother takes away her tablet, laptop, cellphone, and desktop computer". Sad.

Christie Versus Abercrombie

If you look like this you must have lots of friends

The news was full of weight-related stories last week. Governor Chris Christie had lap band surgery to lose weight despite telling Letterman he’s “the healthiest fat guy you’ve ever seen”.  Also this week, Mike Jeffries the CEO of Abercrombie came under fire when he explained why their stores do not carry larger sizes.

Let’s start with Christie, the last time I wrote he told Barbara Walters it was “ridiculous”  that people found him too fat to be president. Next thing you know, he has lap band surgery and in an effort to keep it secret even had the surgeon come to his office for the pre-surgery medical visits. The secret gets out and Christie says his motivation was that he wanted to be there for his kids. Oh and there just so happens to be a presidential race in 2016. This is a guy who had a doughnut on Letterman and mac and cheese during the soft foods post-op phase were these "for his kids" too?

And then there’s Mike Jeffries. I should really congratulate him. I have thought more about Abercrombie this week than ever before. There is an Abercrombie store close to where I get my hair blonded; I only know this because of the line of teenyboppers monopolizing the sidewalk. Perhaps, if I were cooler, I would get on that line. Their CEO told Salon magazine:

“We hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”

In case you’re already nauseated it gets worse…

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids.” Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

Abercrombie only goes up to a women’s size 10, for men they have larger sizes to account for athletic, big guys so that’s fair, right? Aside from exclusionary this sounds silly in a country of larger people but this is definitely not the only clothing brand with their sizes capped. If you walk up and down 5^th Avenue, where the store I mentioned is located, this is far from the only 12-less store. However, I’m still a little confused. How does being small indicate that you have “lots of friends”? Maybe they ask questions at the door, thus the line. Can you imagine a scale and a questionnaire to assess weight, friend volume and All-Americaness prior to entry?

Bad plastic surgery seems to be "cool"

We can’t get around it; most of us care about and notice size differences. When I compare these two examples, one really rubs me the wrong way and it’s the Christie situation that bothers me a lot more. For years he has said his weight is not an issue or doesn’t get in the way of him doing his job. With the possibility that he may run in 2016 it became an issue to the voting public. Christie sneaks around, gets surgery and when the fat cat is out of the bag he cites doing this for his children. How about saying you realized you needed to take action? Then again, I guess sneaky is more acceptable than 400 pounds when it comes to the White House. As far as Abercrombie, I can guarantee you that the line snaking out of their 5^th Avenue store is just as large, despite the press, this week. Sadly, there are a lot of young people who want to be that cool kid. Though I can guarantee CEO Mike was never one of them, maybe that’s where some of this stems from.

Did you hear about these two stories? Which do you find more troublesome?