The new Victoria's Secret advertising campaign appears to be telling women that their models have "the perfect body" and customers are outraged.
The advertisement is marketing their bra named "body," and the play on words could arguably be calling the bra perfect (although Victoria's Secret did not publicly speak about the backlash).
Customers, on the other hand, are interpreting the message much differently.
Since the advertising campaign launched, an online petition was created on change.org by college students Frances Black, Gabriella Kountourides and Laura Ferris, who are all from the UK.
On the petition the students wrote:
Every day women are bombarded with advertisements aimed at making them feel insecure about their bodies, in the hope that they will spend money on products that will supposedly make them happier and more beautiful.
All this does is perpetuate low self-esteem among women who are made to feel that their bodies are inadequate and unattractive because they do not fit into a narrow standard of beauty. It contributes to a culture that encourages serious health problems such as negative body image and eating disorders.
Victoria's Secret's new advertisements play on women's insecurities, and send out a damaging message by positioning the words "The Perfect Body" across models who have exactly the same, very slim body type.
This marketing campaign is harmful. It fails to celebrate the amazing diversity of women's bodies by choosing to call only one body type "perfect."
Victoria's Secret is hugely popular among young women, and they have a crucial responsibility to not use harmful and unhealthy ideas to market their products. We would like Victoria's Secret to take responsibility for their irresponsibility.
We're asking them to change the advertisements and pledge not to use such marketing in the future.
Join us in telling Victoria's Secret #iamperfect
The petition has since received over 9,000 supporters.
Others are joining the student campaigners and are tweeting about the message the advertisement is sending:
It's the 21st century & we still have to tell big corporate companies to stop body image shaming young girls #iamperfect #VictoriaSecret
— Lexia✯™ (@LittleChalleen) October 30, 2014
@VictoriasSecret As a teacher who tries to educate young girls to embrace all shapes and sizes, I object to this horrific ad. #iamperfect — tere ledesma (@ledesmarubio) October 30, 2014
@VictoriasSecret you do more harm than good and your #iamperfect campaign showcases a bunch of near skeletal women. nothing sexy about that
— dave at edpub (@DM_EDpub) October 30, 2014
@VictoriasSecret Shame on you Victoria Secret! #iamperfect and I have body fat! Sexy comes in all shapes and sizes! — IntoxicatingIsabelle (@femdomisabelle) October 30, 2014
