Abs of Steel

            After your boyfriend dumps you and you wallow in the clichéd Ben&Jerry’s, you happen to see an ounce of evil fat coursing up your waist. That should be illegal. There’s extra flesh clinging to your body and you seriously question ever going out in a bikini again, because that is how crucial and decisive this situation is. So you’ve been mourning your figure for the past five months and you have just given up hope (you’re obviously strangely ignorant as to the existence of exercise) when you turn on the TV and you are accosted by the most beautiful sight ever to behold your eyes: the Ab Belt Flex Toning Belt.

            

            “Hard work pays off, but smart work pays you with System Abs by Slendertone.” Whoah. They seriously expect people to believe that a mere vibrating belt happens to be the cure for fleshy fluffiness? Apparently, though, some people, like you after being dumped by your boyfriend, are pliant putty in these people’s logic-less words. For starters, let’s just take into account the ludicrous object that Slendertone is trying to sell to its audience. There is a reason people feel pain and exhaustion when they exercise: because that is the essence of exercising. How do people expect to accomplish the same thing by just slobbering like walruses in their bed watching The Biggest Looser reruns? It’s just not going to happen.

            As for the very basic “rhetorical fouls” made by Slendertone, they just keep on building up. By seeing the infomercial, do they demonstrate disinterest? They don’t seem to share their audience’s need to loose weight, that’s for sure. Of course, any product company’s goal is acquiring money from the poor souls that fall to their evil claws, but they are smarter in persuading their audience. But I will hand it to them, the infomercial makes it seem as if they actually care about their audience’s weight. Point for them. They also happen to be quite successful in the Check the Extremes Heinrichs test, a virtue quality. They describe the opposing argument (actual exercising) by saying “Hard work pays off, but smart work pays you with System Abs by Slendertone” and just making it out to require less physical exertion than the former. Their middle-of-the-road approach accepts exercise as a good thing, and ergo is not too myopic and set on their option being the only one, which is quite well done on their part. They are not setting a “one-size-fits-all choice, but they are obviously dangling on one side of the balance. They do, however, settle for using stereotypically beautiful and fit people to showcase their product, people that have obviously attained their body from other means.

            And then there’s the whole Comparable Experience issue. Where did Slendertone get its information? Did the manufacturer’s themselves actually use the product themselves? Did the advertising crew even touch the so-called Ab Belt? Or are they just sprouting off what their company has trained them to do and say? I’m pretty sure they can attest to the latter. As for the “sussing” ability, they did a pretty good job in cutting to the chase of the issue, the Ab Belt being necessary for the apparent loss of weight. So this infomercial does manage to fulfill most of the tools for assessing practical wisdom. And yet, it would be important to inform you that in the early 2000s, the Federal Trade Commission took action against the manufacturers of other EMS devices for making false and deceptive claims.  It would also be kind of important to assure you that this was due to their leading consumers to believe that the belt would guarantee the same effects as exercise. Obviously then, the whole point of the infomercial and argument was false. Who would have thought?