I used to balk at the idea that media played a part in my eating disorder. Somehow an admittance to pop culture’s influence felt like it made me the victim. I didn’t feel like a victim and I didn’t want to be labeled as one.
Now that I look back, I see that popular media did in fact influence my perception of myself at an age when I really didn’t know who I was. Pinned to my dorm room closet door were pages from VOGUE magazine: pictures of models clad in clothes I liked. But it wasn’t the clothes I admired, it was their bodies. I wanted to look like they did. I wanted clothes to fit me, like they fit the bodies of the models in the photograph. I wanted to feel the way they looked.
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An Unlikely Match
Last week an ad from Reebok Women popped up in my Facebook feed. Typically I scroll right by ads, but this one caught my attention. The model was thin, beautiful striking a pose that accentuated her frame. The airbrushed, passive pose struck me as uncharacteristic of Reebok. Then I read the caption which finished with the hashtag #PerfectNever and #BeMoreHuman.
The image didn’t match the message.
My interest sparked, I dug into the comments. Most people pointed out the hypocrisy of putting a model as the face of a campaign encouraging women that they don’t need to be perfect to reach their potential. A lot of people criticized her size, saying she was ‘too thin.’ Some criticized her status as a well-known model.
It turns out “she” is Gigi Hadid, the current “It Girl” in the modeling and fashion industry. I’d honestly never heard of her until I read the comments. I learned that she has graced the cover of VOGUE, is ranked as 5th in world by Forbes magazine when it comes to her earning power as a model and has walked for some of the biggest fashion houses in the world.
An unlikely match for a campaign with the hashtag #PerfectNever
Most of the commenters criticized her, which is easy to do: she is thin, beautiful-the embodiment of what our culture has deemed the “Perfect Body.” But she isn’t to blame. She’s taken her natural beauty and parlayed it into a lucrative career. She is simply being her. Sure, she’s not perfect. But what we see is society’s standard for perfection.
The criticisms belongs with Reebok.
Reebok,
You made a major miss-step. And it’s not who you chose to spearhead your #PerfectNever campaign, it is how you chose to portray her.
What if #PerfectNever was really real and raw and imperfect in the way you suggest?
What if there was no hair stylist, no make up artist, no air brushing?
What if instead of photographing Gigi in a passive pose that has nothing to with any athletic or fitness related pursuit, you photographed her working hard?
What if instead of jutting her hip out to the side and arching her back and extending her arm up (all which are meant to elongate the body and create a the illusion of a smaller waist and leaner body), she was squatting heavy weight, skin creased and slightly folded over the waistband of her tights?
How much more powerful would it be if you stripped away the facade? If you said to Gigi: “Forget everything you know and do in all your other photo shoots and show us who you really are.”
What if instead of showing us the icon of female physical perfection being perfect. You showed us the icon of female physical perfection being…imperfect?
What if you gave weight and meaning to #PerfectNever instead of cheapening it with hypocrisy?
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Perfect Numbers
It’s clear why Reebok chose Gigi as their spokes person for the #PerfectNever campaign: her social platform translates to dollar signs for Reebok.
from Reebok Women’s Instagram account.
from Reebok Women’s blog post.
If Reebok were really invested in inspiring “women around the globe to reject the expectations and pressure of perfection,” they would have put their advertising dollars into creating a campaign that spoke to women of all sizes, ages, races and abilities. Instead they’ve alienated women who don’t see themselves in the images of their #PerfectNever campaign. And they have proliferated images of society’s perfect female figure, the ideal so many of us are working to prove is wrong and unrealistic. How much more powerful would it have been if they featured the fashion industry’s “It Girl,” the epitome of society’s beauty standards, in completely un-filtered, un-altered images? What if they turned the idea of “perfect” on its head. In all likelihood if that had been their angle Gigi Hadid would never have signed on, she has her own brand to protect and chances are raw and imperfect images wouldn’t jive well with her image. Perhaps they’ll generate the revenue they had hoped to simply because of Gigi’s “large platform,” or maybe women will take a stand against the hypocrisy with their wallet and shop elsewhere.
Speak Out
When I started seeking help for my eating disorder half way through my freshman year, those images came down off of my closet door and I stopped “consuming” print media. The pictures of those models weren’t the cause of my eating disorder, but they certainly worked to solidify my dissatisfaction with my own body. They tapped into deep insecurities I already had about who I was and created a distorted idea that I had to be physical perfect to be ‘valuable.’
Media is undoubtedly influential, even more so now than it was sixteen years ago thanks to the birth of social media. The great thing about social media, however is that we can speak out, interact directly and bring critique against the brands that are perpetuating the un-realistic body images. I have a voice. You have a voice. We have a voice and maybe together we can reject what our society says is perfect and show them what it really means to be #PerfectNever.
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-Sarah
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Right on!
I feel like a lot of companies are just jumping on this bandwagon of “everyone is beautiful” because they see it working in other publications or companies but they haven’t a clue what the movement is really about. Case in point - Reebok.
I totally agree! It’s not about saying that we’re all beautiful or throwing away our scales or not being defined by a number, it’s about disarming the power those things have and reclaiming our confidence in WHO we are not how we look.
Yeah, sure Gigi is stunning..
BUT, like you point out - I’d have loved to have seen Gigi looking raw/un-retouched and actually working out (which I understand she does, rather than just focusing on diet..) That would have held my attention for much longer.
I just hope we don’t create a generation of folk using workout’s to only look a certain way, rather than all the other wonderful benefits of pushing our minds/bodies to the next limit… x
Jennifer Feldman says
I totally agree!! I love that you are speaking what so many of us feel…thank you. Such a good job calling out Reebok on their hypocrisy. It matters and we notice. ❤️
Great post… Even the #BeMoreHuman doesn’t go with the pic, as again, most humans don’t pose like that for a picture. I wonder if they will in any way respond. I have this terrible habit of looking at pictures and seeing my body first rather than seeing my face or smile… I’m working on it…I am like everyone else a #WorkInProgress
Spot on!! Great post!!
You are spot on. I can think of anything worse than an ad campaign portending to elevate women but in effect body shaming them… that picture and caption are completely incongruent. Ridiculous. Good for you for taking Reebok to task. If women speak up, especially an Influencer such as yourself, advertisers
will take notice!
You are so right and I’m glad you called out Reebok. So many companies jump on the “strong is beautiful” or “every body is beautiful” tagline but there’s a discontinuity between their words and their images. There’s something about the passivity of Gigi’s pose that just also sends the wrong message about women - it sort of implies that women should be passive and looked at, rather than strong and active. I see too often in women my age or my younger sister’s age (who grew up even more in social media than I did) that exercise is a means to the end of looking thin, rather than actually being strong and achieving goals. I wish more advertisers didn’t push that message!
Yes! Beautifully written and said!!
I think they could have easily not retouched her and shown that no one is perfect. It was a misstep by Reebok and there were so many ways they could have put a meaning behind their campaign versus just “spitting out what they should”
Ange @ Cowgirl Runs (@cowgirlruns) says
Because I’m a reality TV junkie, I did recognize her 😉
I completely agree with your comments. This ad campaign totally misses the mark, and, honestly? It has the potential to be taken completely opposite than Reebok intends.
Wow. Reebok’s justification of using Gigi (who I think is a lovely girl) just shows how they’re completely missing the point of the criticism.
Ellen says
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I would have responded much better to the #perfectnever campaign if they’d featured athletes/sportswomen, who actually do embody that ‘perfect never’ mindset, always striving for me. They are the women I aspire to be like when I train, and the women I expect to see advertising sports clothing (note you rarely see a male model advertising men’s sports clothing - they use professional athletes). This growing fad for using models to advertise sports/gym wear really doesn’t appeal to me, and I wonder how many other women feel the same.
Ellen says
Ooops, typo! Should say ‘always striving for more’!!
Emily says
Hi there —
While I broadly agree with all the points you make, about the damage advertising imagery causes, the mismatch between #perfectnever and the look of that ad, and the mismatch between a supermodel and a campaign called #perfectnever, I wanted to add some more context to the story (since you had never heard of Gigi Hadid prior to seeing the ad). About a year ago, it was publicized that Gigi Hadid has received a lot of unwarranted and fairly cruel criticism (mostly online) about the way that her body looks and the fact that she doesn’t have a stereotypical supermodel figure. She has been outspoken against that criticism, has acknowledged that she doesn’t have the stereotypical supermodel figure, and I would hope that her presence has helped pushed the fashion industry (ever so infinitesimally) toward a less unrealistic body standard.
So while she remains a supermodel, she has also been the target of body shaming for her failure to match up perfectly against a social standard of “the perfect/correct (supermodel) body” — maybe something far more relatable than the ad immediately conveys. And though Reebok’s explanation was mediocre at best, I would guess that the ad was trying to tap into that side of Gigi’s image, which may be well known among their target audience.
For what it’s worth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/fashion/gigi-hadid-defends-herself-against-online-critics.html?_r=0
https://www.instagram.com/p/8LCm44jCcx/
Thank you for offering this perspective. I didn’t know this side of her. But I have to be honest, not knowing her background or this criticism and simply looking at her figure in the image of the Reebok campaign she looks to me like every other supermodel. If she has been the target of “body shaming” because she doesn’t measure up, then that shows just how incredibly skewed the industry is. I think too that Reebok’s target audience is much, much broader than Gigi’s and while she may be relatable to those who follow her and the fashion industry, she isn’t very relatable to people who are everyday athletes and weekend warriors.
Jen says
Let’s be real about why she was chosen- because she is, as you called her, an “it” girl. She’s a big deal right now, so of course they wanted to hire her. This “campaign” smacks of hypocrisy that riddles so much marketing and media.