Clothing brand receives 100 daily complaints about models being ‘too fat’
A clothing brand has revealed that it receives over a hundred complaints a day that its models are “too fat”.
Snag, which stocks clothing, especially colourful tights, from sizes 4 to 38, employs more than a hundred staff members. At least 12 of those are dedicated to removing negative “hateful” comments from social media platforms.
The Advertising Standards Authority has said that the majority of the complaints it receives relate to models appearing underweight rather than overweight.
It comes as a Next advert was banned last month after its model appeared “unhealthily thin” in a promotion for jeans. Some social media users called the move “hypocritical” questioning why plus-size campaigns were not removed.
“Shaming fat people does not help them to lose weight and actually it really impacts mental health and therefore their physical health,” Snag founder Brigitte Read told the BBC.
She said that the move to ban adverts on bigger bodies amounted to “fat phobia”. Read revealed that she employed over a hundred staff with 12 recruited “just to remove negative comments and big up those promoting body positivity”.
She added: “Fat people exist, they’re equally as valid as thin people, they buy clothes and they need to see what they look like on people that look like them.
“You are not worth less the bigger you are. Models of all sizes, shapes, ethnicities and abilities are valid and should be represented.”
The ASA said it bans models who appear underweight and not overweight due to society’s aspiration for thinness, according to the BBC. The advertising watchdog received 61 complaints about models’ weight in 2024. The majority of these were about models appearing underweight. However, it was only able to find grounds to investigate eight complaints.
Next said of the controversial jeans advert, that it was created with a “strong sense of responsibility to both consumers and society.”
However, the ASA ruled that the “irresponsible” ad must not appear again in the form it had been released, adding: “We told Next to ensure that the images in their ads were prepared responsibly and did not portray models as being unhealthily thin.”
Other photos of the model within the same product listing showed her in different positions and from different angles, and she did not appear to be unhealthily thin in these additional images, the ASA said.
The watchdog said: “Because the pose, camera angle and styling in the ad investigated strongly emphasised the slimness of the model’s legs, we considered that the ad gave the impression that the model was unhealthily thin.”
