I was sitting in my office (the bathroom) flipping through the latest Vanity Fair feeling annoyed that Julia Roberts is on the cover with legs as long as the Great Wall of China sitting on the steel-hewn lap of that aphrodisiacal Idris Elba (she’s my new Gwyneth Paltrow object of jealousy) when I flipped to this ad campaign for Saint Laurent Paris (click the link to see the image on Shannon Bradley-Colleary’s blog).
My first thought was, what the fuckacta? My second thought was, that poor little honey bunny, because this lovely young woman looks as though she’s dying of starvation and as the mother of two daughters I just want to feed her.
Even if she’s actually only twelve-years-old (she appears to be somewhere around age 20) she still doesn’t have enough meat on her bones to be healthy and may, in fact, be dangerously close to death.
Am I crazy? Am I overreacting?
I think we’ve all become accustomed to seeing women whose bodies are simply animate hangers for clothing. But even with my high tolerance for anorexic models this one struck me as outrageously cruel.
Cruel for the girl in this photo as booking this job has affirmed for her that if she’s skinny enough, she’ll work. She’ll think twice about eating even one healthy meal a day fearing if she gains an ounce she’ll be unemployed.
This ad is also cruel to all of the young girls and women of a certain age who’ll see it, some of whom will, through osmosis, begin to believe this is the beauty standard. One they can never achieve and still be functional.
I was inspired by a 16-year old girl who recently started a petition at change.org to get Seventeen Magazine to stop photoshopping their models and she won!
So I’ve started a petition asking Yves Saint Laurent CEO, Francesca Bellettini, to stop using anorexic or dangerously low BMI models in YSL ad campaigns. You can CLICK ON THIS LINK to sign the petition and share your views on the subject of what I call advertising’s War On Women.
If this goes well I’d really like to begin a movement to get all advertisers to use healthy women for their campaigns, one ad campaign at a time. Please share this one if you have the time. It’s important and we can make a difference. Thank you in advance!
Shannon Bradley-Colleary
Shannon Bradley-Colleary blogs at The Woman Formerly Known As Beautiful. She's also a contributing blogger on The Huffington Post. Her posts have landed her on The Today Show, NPR, CNN, Raising America with Kyra Phillips, Fox11News and more. She's been published in The DailyMail Online, Babble, Blogher and MomsLA. Her book, Into The Child: 40 Weeks in the Gestational Wilderness was named one of the Top 100 Indie Books of 2012 by the Kirkus Review. Her book, Smash, Crash and Burn: Tales From The Edge Of Celebrity, details her life as an L.A. Wacktress (waiter/actress) in the early 90s; including her relationship with Brandon Bruce Lee and a her tête-à-tête with David Schwimmer. She kisses and tells. Shannon is thrilled to be a monthly columnist on Midlife Boulevard.
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