the puzzles of advertising

I was just elsewhere on this here interweb and the following ad was up on the screen:



I didn't click on the ad, other than to right-click and save the image, and I have no intention of ever doing so. Let's, for now, put aside the issue of a one rule miracle cure for dealing with unwanted body mass. Really, who is this ad supposed to convince? When you really take a moment to look at it? First off, I'm not at all sure about that whole twenty-five pounds of stomach fat. (This makes me curious about how much my stomach fat weighs.) Where is this stomach fat? Maybe it's just me, but this woman doesn't look like she has twenty-five pounds worth of stomach fat. (She could maybe lose twenty-five pounds overall, but I wonder how thin (too thin?) this would make her.) My biggest issue though, because I really don't know what twenty-five pounds of stomach fat looks like, is the before/after pictures. Yes, we can definitely tell that she has lost weight based on that second picture of only her head, right? Right? Okay, so she got a tan and darkened her hair (I'm assuming that's the same woman, although I know the perils of assumption), and this is supposed to prove...?

Anyhow, I have other things to be doing right now rather than overanalyze this ad.