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14th Mar 2016

Fashion Designer Has The Perfect Response To “Insulting” Ad For Plus Size Shorts

This was an incredibly weird choice.

Megan Cassidy

“You don’t sell clothes by shaming the target audience.”

In what was one of the weirdest advertising choices we’ve ever seen, San Francisco clothing marketplace Wish.com hosted an ad which featured plus size shorts being modelled by a decidedly slim lady.

The model posed with both of her legs in just one leg of the shorts, to show JUST how much skinnier she is than the target audience… obviously.

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Image via Wish.com

When HelloGiggles posted an article about the bizarre choice, the internet was understandably outraged.

But Bristol fashion designer Christina Ashman couldn’t let it sit, and felt compelled to create her own ad to put the original one into context.

The Interrobang Art & Fashion designer got thinking about how it would look if clothes for slimmer people were advertised in the same manner.

So she took a small skirt, put it on one leg, and flipped us all the bird for good measure.

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Alongside the image, she wrote:

“I saw this article on HelloGiggles earlier.

“I don’t have any formal qualifications in marketing, but if plus size ladies buy shorts based on how one leg looks on a whole petite woman, then maybe smaller ladies will buy skirts based on how the whole thing looks on one pretty thunderous thigh.”

She later explained to Mail Online: 

“You don’t sell clothes by shaming the target audience. It’s fine if you’re using a small model in small clothes, but to put a petite model in one leg of some plus-size shorts is just unnecessarily insulting.

“I just thought if they can put a whole petite woman in one leg of some plus-size shorts, then I should do the opposite and put one leg in a small skirt! I just wanted to highlight how absurd their marketing was.”

Hear, hear!

I saw this article on HelloGiggles earlier. I don’t have any formal qualifications in marketing, but if plus size ladies…

Posted by Interrobang Art & Fashion on Friday, 11 March 2016