Guys also (at least for me). Mine range from "5 tips to lose belly fat" to "Halo wars is coming" to "Single mom looking for an easy way back to school?" (WTF? a male single mom?). A lot of mine are male-specific: "Looking for an 18-year old male gamer to test..." Of course I think showing tanned shirtless guys with six-pack abs can be just as damaging as showing skinny women.

It's just annoying. I don't like being told I'm a fatty who only plays video games.

I do some Facebook advertising for my job, and when you place an ad you get to select the sex/age/location/interests of your target market, and only those people will see the ads. So Facebook doesn't pick for you, the advertiser does.

But yea, I'm an 18 year old female, and all I get is stuff like "Overweight at 18?" and "Don't let yourself go."

The one thing I've noticed is since I've changed my status to married all my ads center around pregnancy and babies. It's slightly disturbing as I take my obsession with facebook as one big sign on how I'm so not read for teh babiez at all

I was so disgusted with the "Don't Let Yourself Go!" and "Got a Muffin Top?" ads that I switched my birth year to 1907. Now instead of provoking anger and frustration, the Facebook ads often make me giggle, especially the one with an old, mustachioed gentleman giving me a thumbs up.

LaurenS: ahh, makes sense.

April: I don't even know what a muffin top is-- on a person, anyway. Nor why it should be bad: I thought it was the best part of the muffin.

Now I'm off to change my birth year because I want to see the old mustachioed gentleman. All I'm getting at my age is a guy with a bad haircut saying "I can tell you how to make $1000 a week". You'd think he could get a better haircut. </snark>

What bothers me about facebook advertising are those incredibly skanky American Apparel ads. All the women are half naked and vacant eyed . . . I saw one yesterday in which the model looked abou 14 (perhaps she was an adult but that's not the look they were going for). I saw another one that looked suspiciously like the body of a grown woman with the head of a 14 year old. Ugh. I hate those ads.

I'm not seeing anything like this. When I click the ad page, I get a list of easily ignorable text-only ads. Two about babies, one about shoes, and the rest are mostly about politics.

I've got AdBlock Plus on my Firefox and it seems that it strips the pictures and banner ads out. Cool! http://adblockplus.org/en/

There's a Facebook group my friend started that has what seems like a decent plan to get rid of these ads. Check it:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=23200440839

The only thing I really noticed about Facebook ads was that when I was in a relationship, all of these ads for engagement rings showed up on the side of my page and the second I became single those went away and the "22 and single?" ads started appearing.

Also, the one about cellulite gets me, especially when you see the cellulite smoothed out and at the bottom it says "dramatization".

I'm Jewish and I get tons of ads for "Find a Jewish husband!" Geez, not ready for that.

Interestingly, when I got engaged, I was constantly seeing advertisements all about how to plan my dream wedding, how to win my dream honeymoon, how to generally fit the mold of bride-to-be, etc. My now-husband also changed his relationship status to engaged--of course, because he's a man, he didn't have to deal with the bridal industry clogging up the left side of his facebook page at every turn, because after all, only girls really want to plan weddings and get married... :)

x364173: I, too, was unaware of the non-food-related definition of "muffin top" until the kind folks at Facebook enlightened/shamed me. It's when your belly/love handles hang over the side of your jeans. But seriously, the ads for the 100+ set are not to be missed.

Alexandra: Have you seen The Onion article about the raid at an American Apparel warehouse? It's fantastic. http://www.theonion.com/content/news/14_american_apparel_models_freed

Alexandra, it's definitely possible that the model actually was 14. I know someone who used to model for them, when she was a young teenager, and the stories are pretty revolting. She was talking about how you needed to get drunk enough on shoots to pose the way they wanted you to, but not drunk enough that you were in danger. IN DANGER. Great.

On a related note, Facebook also scolds you for not selecting a sex and tells you your mini-feed is "confusing" in a notice on your home page every once in awhile when you don't select a sex. There's a group protesting this, but I'm pretty sure it won't change...which is too bad since not selecting a sex is the only option people who don't identify as male or female have.

I got sick of all the ads I was seeing for breast enlargement that I got AdBlock Plus for my browser. Yes, I have small breasts, but I'm happy with that, and how the hell does Facebook know my bra size, anyway?

I don't even get text ads, anymore. Take that, Facebook.

Yes! I have totally noticed the number of insulting ads, and began reporting almost any ad with flesh involved about a month ago. I'm pleased to report that I've been seeing a lot less of these ads since, but they also seem to have taken away my thumbs up/thumbs down easy reporting mechanism. Hmm...

I'm glad that there are other people reporting this as well.

I've noticed the exact same thing and you know what? It makes me feel pretty shitty. I can't look at pictures of me and my friends without being told I'm fat. How are you all reporting this/getting rid of the ads on your page? I would really like to be rid of them.

Ever since I changed profile to "engaged" (to another girl, btw), I've been getting adverts for the wedding industrial complex telling me that I need a photographer, that I need to lose twelve pounds in two weeks (Why are those ads even ALLOWED?), and that my allegedly male fiancé requires a tuxedo. Also, cocktail napkins.

The quick-weight-loss ones bother me the most. What if some other chick is paying attention to those? Why would someone marry someone who they did not find attractive as-is?

Most importantly, why are there no adverts for discount kegs of Woodchuck? Those would actually be useful.

I am recently engaged and of course have just been bombarded with wedding-related advertising. So, i get the "you're fat" and "use our expensive wedding industry services" combo. fun.

The facebook adds make me SO ILL.

Like Ivy, I recently got engaged to another woman, and facebook has made a 24 hour project of telling me everything that my OBVIOUSLY MALE [or...not] fiance and I need for our wedding. The little heteronormative cartoon couples are totally gag-worthy. What's possibly more annoying about this is the fact that facebook DEFINITELY knows I am not heterosexual, because that info is on my page as well, and I get corresponding super-gay ads to prove they know it.

My hands-down least favourite will always be the weightloss ones. I like my fucking muffin top. I despise advertising. I love good food. Lay off, assholes.

I also started a facebook group called: Facebook thinks I'm Fat, And I Ain't down with that! Please join!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17877566724

Please don't tell me I'm the only one to have gotten a treatment for vaginosis, so I won't have to "deal with" any foul vagina-orginated smells. Does facebook assume ALL women have smelly vaginas? Or is this a more subtle shot, perhaps in response to the obvious indications to feminism on my page? Also, who buys anti-smell vagina lotion from a facebook ad?

On a more humorous note, facebook and pop-up ads in general latched on to my new IP address and network when I was abroad in Belgium. Ads were in french or dutch depending on where I was connecting from--actually, I felt like I was being stalked. But I got a lot of ads touting green cards online and how to live and work in the US, and I panicked--I AM a US citizen! What does the internet know that I don't??

They aren't making a secret about the fact that they target by age, gender, location and interests. http://www.facebook.com/ads/

They used to let you give a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to advertisements, but I noticed that disappeared. They realized that no one wants any of their "you're fat, old and ugly" ads, which is what pays the bills. I appreciate free sites like this one, so I put up with most of them, but you can still report them by going to http://www.facebook.com/ads/adboard/ if there is a really nasty one.

Every time I see the Muffin tops ads I think of Jenna from 30 rock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1WY_BxSnD8

How are you all reporting this/getting rid of the ads on your page? I would really like to be rid of them.

If you use Firefox, you can get ad blocking extensions. I use Adblock Plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

I use the EasyList filter, which gets rid of most of the ads, and Easy Element grabs the rest. (Get those here: http://easylist.adblockplus.org/ ) Voila! No more ads.

For the past few days these ads have driven me crazy. No, I am not 22 and fat. Thank you Facebook ass***.

I refuse to identify myself as female for Facebook. Any human can see who I am in my profile pic, but no marketer deserves to know something as irrelevant as what dangles between my legs.

The ads that offended me above all the others were the ones that had "Ewwwww!" printed over top some woman's midsection. that comment is way nastier than any poor woman's "muffin top," "FUPA," "cankles," or whatever body part they want to hatefully call out.

There's a reason I don't read Perez Hilton or watch VH1 fashion police shows, and that's to avoid hearing comments like the one in the ads I described. I was so offended by those ads I considered complaining to Facebook, but at the time I didn't realize there was a thumbs-up icon...I imagined instead that I would have to write an email that would disappear into a yawning "whatever, lady" black hole.

Fascinating! I have adblock plus, and got it before I got Facebook, so I had no idea. Whooooboy would I have been irritated. Especially with the muffin top one.

"I refuse to identify myself as female for Facebook. Any human can see who I am in my profile pic, but no marketer deserves to know something as irrelevant as what dangles between my legs."

Me too. I think it's absurd that they are asking me about my physical anatomy on a social/professional networking site. They want to know my GENDER, thanks. Until they ask me for it, I won't tell them anything, because regardless of whether people think it's ridiculous, I hate when people mix up sex and gender. Ugh.

They even ASKED me once, if I could fill in my sex so that my minifeed wouldn't be "confusing." Gee, so sorry that anything other than binary gender and gendered pronouns is confusing. GAG.

Unfortunately I used female pronouns in my status updates a few times, so facebook has reverted back to deeming me female, no matter how many times I go back and try to fix it so it doesn't anymore.

There is a group on Facebook dedicated to calling for the ads to be taken down called "Take Down the Love Handles".

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13502166297

Also, LlesbianLlama, there are several groups urging Facebook to stop harrassing/forcing people to pick a gender:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24392324154 Facebook harrasses, demands you gender!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22261987107
I'm not going to specify my gender. Get over it, Facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24581446564
Appeal to Facebook To Stop Forcing Normative Gender
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2262428561
Expand Gender Options On Facebook Petition
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2230066720
People for a Gender-Neutral Friendly Facebook

Let's hope those links work!

Does it bother anyone else that when your facebook gender is neutral, it apparently assumes you are male? Which might be fine for ads, but leads to my friend's entries on my newsfeed always being something like "Beth has just added On the Road to his favorite books." I'm not innocent of this, but I hate that "male" is the default gender, still, even though the majority of people are women. Even I get that little socially programmed spasm of confusion in the back of my mind when "she" is used in a generic setting, like instructions, and it bothers me so much.

I just turned off AdBlock Plus on Facebook to see this...and I don't. I refreshed the page like 10 times. All the ads I get are for jobs, technology (most of them are technology), and food. Oh, wait, one more refresh and I got one about some supermodel diet...I think I weigh less than the model in the photo. Huh...I actually see a lot for Jews, which given my school's demographics makes sense I guess...except for the part where my religion is listed as "vim"... (anyone not getting that, it's a computing Holy War...text editors...Church of Emacs or Church of Vi[m]).

I've been advertising with facebook for several months now, but it has never occured to me to change my male/female setting to see the difference in how and what ads are displayed. Great advice to try it out and thank you for posting about it.

I was being stalked. But I got a lot of ads touting green cards online and how to live and work in the US, and I panicked--I AM a US citizen! What does the internet know that I don't?? Must University

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