Why companies are trivialising eating disorders and getting rich off the backs of the sufferers
The fashion industry has started to put its house in order. It’s time rest of business world followed suit, writes Josie Cox
As a small, independent clothes seller on Amazon, you’d be forgiven for wanting to push the boundaries to prove your commercial brilliance. Competition is brutal — especially if you’re a minnow in a world full of retail mammoths — and courage is clearly rewarded.
But when the resolve of vendors to flog their goods becomes so great that it draws them into the thorny field of mental health, they ought to be shut down. Instantly.
I’ve been shocked by adverts in the past. In April, there was Nivea’s ridiculous ‘white is purity’ deodorant commercial that the toiletry brand clearly hadn’t bothered to sense check.
A heap of inappropriately sexual and sexist content has hit our airwaves and billboards in recent years and I can’t imagine anyone much enjoyed being reminded in 2015 of just how beach-body un-ready they were.
But this week, a hooded sweatshirt ensured that all of those campaigns faded into utter insignificance in the tasteless marketing stakes.
The offending item — selling in the US in four different sizes and priced from $24.75 — was emblazoned with the chilling message: ‘Anorexia (anuh-rek-see-uh). Like Bulimia, except with self control’.
As a grammar pedant, it’s rare that a missing hyphen is not the first thing I notice about a pathetic meme, but in this case my utter outrage would even have made me oblivious to rogue exclamation marks littered throughout.
Clearly, the person who designed this garment has no concept of the grave, nay life-threatening, nature of eating disorders.
So, for their benefit: anorexia is a devastating psychological disorder that ends friendships, relationships and lives and goes above and beyond out-of-control dieting and vanity.
Sufferers can develop an obsession with control that takes over every element of their lives, often coupled with crippling self-loathing, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, persistent anxiety and harrowing isolation.
In the first instance, restrictive eating can lead to deficiencies of vital nutrients. When your body fat falls below a certain level, you can become critically vulnerable to infection, your immune system can fail, your hormones are thrown out of whack, your bones become brittle, your attention span withers and your fertility can become compromised irreparably.
Short of smothering, or poisoning, yourself, I can hardly think of a more effective way of killing yourself more slowly and more agonisingly.
Bulimia is equally damning and sufferers are in absolutely no way inferior to those battling anorexia. Many eating disorder patients drift from one condition into the other.
Anyone with either is in desperate need of professional medical care. References to discipline — generally a noble trait — could not be more inappropriate.
Granted, this is an extreme example, but frustratingly it is by no means an isolated one. A Gala Bingo ad was this week banned for suggesting that gambling could provide an escape from depression and serve as a way to pay off debt and medical bills. The irony — which you couldn’t make up — cannot have escaped the creator.
The Advertising Standards Authority has a duty to clamp down on offensive and indelicate promotions like this, but how is it possible that so many businesses don’t have the emotional wherewithal to realise their unacceptability before they have to issue a sycophantic apology?
In August, Victoria Beckham reportedly said that she was considering legal action against a fish and chip shop in Tyneside which in its advertising had claimed its pizza crusts were thinner than the former Spice Girl.
Its delivery vehicle featured a caricature of the former Spice Girl wearing a sash reading ‘Anorexic Fashion Icon’.
Over 1.6 million people in the UK are estimated to be directly affected by eating disorders. The fashion industry has already taken baby steps towards admitting its responsibility in the matter.
Emaciated models are banned on some catwalks. It’s now time for the rest of the business world to get a grip. You can always apologise and scrap a tasteless campaign when reason catches up with you. The damage you’ve inflicted, though, will be harder to fix.