Weight Loss titan Jenny Craig forced to shut down operations

A Big Fat Win

Author

By Walter Mencken

Publish Date

May 12, 2023

Another slice of humble pie: This week, in response to charges of body shaming, fat-phobia, and creating a hostile atmosphere for women by the prominent display of Jenny Craig’s name on the pavilion which she funded, the University of San Diego agreed to install Smokin’!, a bronze sculpture of a “modern, curvy woman” smoking a cigarette while relaxing in the nude, in the pavilion’s courtyard. “Smokin’! shows us a woman who is comfortable in her own skin, and doesn’t fret about putting her own pleasure first,” said USD President of Artistic Statements Rhoda Eyefull. “She doesn’t have ‘trouble losing the weight,’ because she knows that she doesn’t need to trouble herself about losing the weight. So she doesn’t need Jenny Craig, or Weight Watchers, or much of anything, really — except maybe another cigarette. We hope that this statue will help us undo some of the harm we may have caused by accepting money from a woman who profited from feminine anxieties created and imposed by the patriarchy’s male gaze.”

Last week, visitors to the Jenny Craig website were surprised to find its usual offerings of subscription meal plans, exercise regimens, and articles on weight loss and nutrition replaced by a blunt message: “We give up. Go pound a pint of ice cream. Maybe even a half-gallon. Go big or go home, right? And you, America, have always gone big. Really, really big. As for us, we’re going home.” A call to the local headquarters of the 40-year-old weight loss business confirmed what the website seemed to say: Jenny Craig was shutting down operations. “America is a fat people,” said Jenny Craig spokesman Cal O’Reigh. “Or maybe it’s better to say that we’re a weak people. As soon as we had the means to sit still and get fat, we did. For 40 years, Jenny Craig has offered a healthy alternative to that paradigm, and for a while, we enjoyed some small measure of success. But now that you’ve got a better class of diet pill out there, why bother with diet and exercise?” O’Reigh then took the opportunity to promote his new business, BigBox, a provider of oversized coffins.