This Mattress Firm Commercial shows us the times we live in

 

Look at each person in this Mattress Firm commercial.  Notice something about them?  Watch again.     

It's not just Lucia, the woman we see waking up at the beginning of the ad.  If the year was 1975 and you saw this commercial, you'd notice it immediately.  Today, it's harder to spot- because what I'm focusing on has become much, much more normal. 

Yes, I'm talking about the...um...girth of the people in this ad.  Lucia is morbidly obese.  And the other two people we see are also overweight- the guy floating through the store at the end has a sizeable belly that might not look that big to you because we just saw Lucia.  In 1975, the two Mattress Firm employees we see would be instantly recognized as carrying excess adipose tissue, and Lucia would be instantly recognized as being dangerously, almost comically fat.  In 2023, I bet most people don't even note the size of these people.  Even Lucia looks like someone we'd expect to see in the grocery store or or on the train or at the beach.  The other two people?  They don't stand out- they are pretty "normal" looking.  But the fact is that nobody in this ad looks healthy.  Yet their obvious health problems are not addressed at all.  

Lucia "woke up in the right bed," but I'm actually surprised she didn't wake up wearing a CPAP machine, as sleep apnea is extremely common among the morbidly obese.  She went to Mattress Firm and bought a mattress from two overweight people who, if they don't get their act together, are very likely to be in Lucia's situation in a few years or so.  But there's no problem, because Capitalism is on it, producing more and more stuff to help people who have weight issues ignore those weight issues for as long as possible- mattresses, seatbelt extenders, scooters, etc.- instead of responding to that big blaring alarm going off when they look in the mirror.  It's no wonder that the average lifespan in the Western World leveled off a few years ago (after rising steadily for 300 years) and is actually starting to trend downwards.  It's getting bad out here.