Hey, you’re FAT!

Last night I was feeding the cats before bed* and something got me singing the Tom Jones tune from the Meow Mix ads, you know the one:

What’s new pussycat woaaah woooah wooooooooah…

Anyhow, then Xander piped in with the other Meow Mix favorite:

Meow meow meow meow.. meow meow meow meow (Remember? I like chicken, I like liver Meow Mix Meow Mix please deliver)

He laughed and asked if we had those ads in Canada too which made me laugh because 9 chances out of 10 the ads originated in North America and here in the Netherlands they had some dubbed version of it I started joking with him playing like the American snob and saying how all the GOOD TV ads come from America anyway, when he asked “like what?” I raised my nose in the air and said “Like that ad, you know “omdat je zwaar bent!!“.

His face went from playful, to shock, to withheld laughter and finally to just outright in-your-face laughter while I stook there blinking and wondering what was so funny.

The television ad I was talking about was something about hair dye or shampoo, I can’t remember but it usually has some star in it like Jennifer Garner or someone. They flip their hair and say “Because you’re worth it!” and when you watch it here in NL it’s obviously dubbed. What it REALLY says though is “… Omdat je het waard bent!” (because you’re worth it)

Whenever I heard it, I heard it as “Omdat je zwaar bent”, which sounds quite a lot the same to the ear of a native english speaker… but that means “because you’re fat” (or because you are heavy).

It all suddenly made sense why Xander went through the range of facial expressions I saw. He was surprised to hear me say that and then he said the image came into his head of what it would be like if a Loreal (or some other cosmetic company) had a television ad saying “Because you’re FAT!”

Anyway, yeah … So my Dutch still needs a bit of improvement hehe

* We feed the cats a little before bed so they won’t meow all night until the early morning when we get up and feed them