A Story in Contrasts
Filed under General
This week, I posted a link to this article on my Facebook page, thinking that it was refreshing to finally see someone (a prominent German fashion magazine even) rejecting the distorted image of unhealthy, underweight woman as models. I thought maybe the tide was turning, but alas, it is not. Today on Yahoo news I found this story about Ralph Lauren, who fired Filippa Hamilton for being overweight and not being able to fit into their clothes. Filippa is 5’10″ and weighs 120 pounds, a size that most American woman can only dream about. As if being fired isn’t bad enough, Ralph Lauren published the Photoshop disaster of Filippa that you see to the right.
First Ralph Lauren denied the whole thing, trying to have the photos removed by claiming copyright over them. Kudos to Boing Boing for responding with this claim of fair use:
Sue and be damned. Copyright law doesn’t give you the right to threaten your critics for pointing out the problems with your offerings. You should know better. And every time you threaten to sue us over stuff like this, we will:
a) Reproduce the original criticism, making damned sure that all our readers get a good, long look at it, and;
b) Publish your spurious legal threat along with copious mockery, so that it becomes highly ranked in search engines where other people you threaten can find it and take heart; and
c) Offer nourishing soup and sandwiches to your models.
And so the whole threat of a lawsuit backfired. To no one’s surprise, Ralph Lauren then admitted: “After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately.” Which apparently included firing the model.
Someone needs to send Ralph Lauren executives over to Germany to get a good dose of what’s healthy, and the rest of us need to send a message to Ralph Lauren with our pocketbooks.
