Brickbat: Body Shaming

The United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned two Zara advertisements featuring models deemed "unhealthily thin," citing the promotion of harmful beauty standards. The ads, which appeared on Zara's app and website, showed a model with a "gaunt" appearance due to shadows and a tight hair bun, and another with a pose emphasizing "protruding" collarbones, leading the ASA to rule them "irresponsible." Zara removed the ads but said both models had medical certificates confirming their good health, and no direct consumer complaints were received. The decision follows similar bans on Next ads earlier in 2025 for featuring overly thin models, raising questions among some Brits about why ads with overweight models face no similar restrictions.

Comments

[Vernon Depner]

Follow the money. I'm confident it would lead back to manufacturers of unhealthy, fattening foods.

[Neutral not Neutered]

What about plus sized clothing manufacturers?

[Incunabulum]

I would disagree. I don't think those guys even care.

Follow it back and you'll find it's just the fat activists living off of government money - quango is a British term for a reason.

[Kemuel]

In America we are appalled by this, but its pretty normal by Euro/Canadian standards. A nice reminder that America is the last free country.

[Neutral not Neutered]

Euro/Canadian?

No this is the UK and it is different, especially the past decade. They have literally dropped off the Authoritarian cliff.

[Chumby]

In the UK, they will ban ads showing women with protruding collarbones but will encourage ads showing women with something protruding from their crotches.

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

Some bones are better than other bones.

[Chumby]

Protruding Adam’s apples on women will also be allowed.

[Randy Sax]

raising questions among some Brits about why ads with overweight models face no similar restrictions.

Was going to be my exact comment.

[Randy Sax]

Also, this is pretty much a women only issue. If the ad has a skinny dude, or a buff dude, no one would care at all.

[mad.casual]

In both directions, the only people looking at an adult female with the body of a 12-yr.-old boy in xer great-grandpa's Zuit Suit and thinking "Yeah, I need to spend a thousand dollars on suit jackets with shoulder pads because I'm too thin and it projects power like that... person." are smooth-foreheaded, fish-lipped LA women and pantsuit girlbosses.

Kate Upton, Misty May-Treanor, Sydney Sweeney, Margot Robbie... you average, stay-at-home mom or working wife aren't trying to attain that look in order to project power or attract attention.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

"...raising questions among some Brits about why ads with overweight models face no similar restrictions."

Cheeky buggers.

Fat women only make thin women feel better about themselves; on the other hand, skinny women bother the living fuck out of fat women, who want a pretend world where no one cares what they look like.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned two Zara advertisements featuring models deemed "unhealthily thin..."

And sporting unhealthily straight teeth.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Hey if I don't have straight teeth I don't wont to see yours. Might make me feel ugly or something.

[Chumby]

Know what else isn’t straight?

[Vernon Depner]

Professional wrestling?

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

What’s the odds the ASA is full of fat chicks?

[mad.casual]

I think the best part is that the women do look legitimately malnourished for some stupid 50-yr.-old-avant-garde aesthetic that virtually no one outside the elite modelling industry likes or appreciates.

[Rick James]

no one outside the elite modelling industry likes or appreciates.

Dominated by gay men.

[mad.casual]

I should've even said *fashion modelling*, because Cathy Ireland, Elle MacPherson, Cindy Crawford, Brooke Shields, Christie Brinkley, Rachel Hunter, etc., etc., etc. never had the flat-chested, thigh-gap, protruding collarbones problem.

And gay fashionistas and divorced/post-wall/post-menopausal fag hags is really a "Who's the host and who's the parasite?" sort of symbiotic situation.

[VinniUSMC]

The malnourished fad is so old, isn't it? Who actually thinks they look good? They look unhealthy, to me. It's better than obese trans ads, but honestly, not by a lot.

Government involvement shouldn't be necessary, unless the advertisers are holding these women captive and feeding them Hamas hostage diets in order to force them to be that size.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

'Government involvement shouldn't be necessary, unless- ______________.... " seems to be the question du century.

[The issue of enumerated and non enumerated rights is in another article.]

[mad.casual]

It's better than obese trans ads, but honestly, not by a lot.

It's explicitly proto-trans, explicitly pushed by-and-to corporate feminists and female social elite in the 70s and 80s. They explicitly choose/chose flat-chested androgynous women and dressed them in exaggerated imitation of male fashion to both deride the patriarchy and peacock competitively. This wasn't and isn't subtle.

Arguably a result of The British Invasion except, rock stars aren't generally out to get everyone to look like them or wear their clothing.

[Rick James]

How do you do my fellow kids. Man, aren't these woke speech restrictions like... the worst?

[Neutral not Neutered]

The UK must have lead leeching into the water pipes or something because they are going nuts with their Authoritarian policies this past decade.

Worse than anyone. Are law makers being paid off by outside, communist influencers? Or are they just stunned?

[AT]

We have to make the worst among us feel the best about themselves for being awful.