in the pharmacy

at one glance

Warning! This is a detour into general soap-boxy topics. You have been warned. 

Above is a picture of an aisle dedicated to dieting products. Diet pills are very popular in Japan and are sold in most shops, corner shops, conbinis, pharmacies, supermarkets and so on. Sometimes they are sold next to the till, so you can chuck it in the basket on the way to pay.You can tell they are 'diet pills' because unlike they're gentler cousins 'vitamin supplements', they are about six times the price. 

The idea is that you take the pill before or after you think you might be in danger of 食べ過ぎ or 'overeating'. In the UK, if you eat too much, generally, the reaction might be 'oops - I'm a bit full now. I'll lie down a bit and watch TV.' In Japan, apparently, you crack open a pill box and take laxatives.

Recently I watched an advert (not this one, but similar) for these pills, where two girls were ready to eat dinner in front of the TV. They were kneeling on the floor and seemed to be having a normal weekday night in. They both took a pill before they started to eat. I don't understand what they were planning on having which meant they had to take these pills - but the message it conveys is that eating anything at all for dinner is 食べ過ぎ or eating too much and is somehow wrong. 

Calorie Cut? Um. No. 

I suppose I'm used to going to pharmacies in Tokyo and seeing these kinds of products lined up and ignoring it, but there's something particularly bizarre about seeing it all sold in Niseko: a small-town whose population is made of people over the age of 65, very young children and their athletic, outdoors-y parents who moved to Niseko for the skiing and hiking and who don't seem to be the kind of people who'd be interested in losing weight. The pharmacy itself is pretty much empty, apart from old women. So... who buys these things anyway?

(Reads: Fat Busters!) If you're taking this, you don't need a diet pill. You need a chill pill.

There are a lot of things which make me angry about diet pills. But I'll put them in a list and save you the rant:

Diet pills -

1. Exploit young girls' low self-esteem and body image and... 

2. Encourages them to throw away large sums of money (One packet starts at about ten pounds), which could be spent on something worthwhile (rent, travel expenses, college fees, concert tickets, roller blades, massage, very fluffy slippers...) 

3. Support a world-view which forces women to spend most of their time worrying about their body and what they put in their mouths (when they could be doing something else like working on their career, for instance...) 

4. And threatens long-term damage to heart, stomach-lining, intestines and kidneys if used regularly. 

Right. Time to count to ten and breathe deeply and maybe go out for a walk.