And also your understanding that the female body needs to be a certain width to accomodate things called INTERNAL ORGANS. It’s really been a bad week for Ralph Lauren because the people in charge of his advertising are obviously smoking some fairly strong weed. How else to explain the decision to Photoshop this image of long-time Ralph Lauren model Fillipa Hamilton so that she looks like some type of alien life form?
It gets better. After the image was released and published on website boingboing, Ralph Lauren’s lawyers got busy with legal letters threatening anyone who dared publish the image. I guess it was around this time they realised they had messed up rather badly and were staring down the barrel of a PR disaster.
After realising that people were displeased with such a depiction of a woman, they released the following statement:
“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.”
No shit, Sherlock. And then some.
“They photoshopped her in a way that for me is grotesque and makes her look like a cartoon,” Geoffrey Menin, Hamilton’s attorney, told NBC News. “The trouble is that it’s damaging to her. Who wants to hire somebody that looks like that?” And it’s not just damaging to her. What about the fact that many MANY people decided that was the image of a woman they wanted to reflect their fashion brand? What about that?
Anyway, they said sorry. Kind of. And you know what else they did? THEY FIRED Fillipa Hamilton FOR BEING TOO FAT. In real life. I’m not even kidding.
Here’s how Filippa has looked in their ads over the last few years….
And here is how they thought she would look SOOO much better:
Pro-anorexia websites everywhere now have a new poster girl. One who doesn’t even exist because IT WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE FOR A HUMAN TO LOOK LIKE THAT.
And here is Filippa on The Today Show talking about being sacked. She’s 23 and has worked for Ralph Lauren since she was 15. No wonder they sacked her! Fat AND old!
Of the appalling image in question, Filippa said on Today: “It’s not a good example when you see this picture, every young woman is going to look at it and think that it is normal to look like that. It’s not. I saw my face on this super-extremely skinny girl, which is not me. It makes me sad. It makes me think that Ralph Lauren wants to have this kind of image. It’s an American brand … and it’s not healthy, and it’s not right.”
And then, yes, she was fired. For her fatness. “They said I couldn’t fit in their clothes anymore,” she said on the Today show, adding that a letter was sent to her agent in April which read: “We’re terminating your services because you don’t fit into the sample clothes that you need to wear.”
A Ralph Lauren spokesperson denies Hamilton was axed over her weight, insisting that her termination “was a result of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract with us.”
But Hamilton said, “I did everything that I could. I was very loyal to them. I was on time every time.”
So I’m guessing that some conversations were had at Ralph Lauren HQ about how Filippa was not thin enough. Their advertising agency and marketing deparment obviously took this sentiment to heart and decided to make Filippa thin enough. Genius!
But wait, there’s more. Yesterday, 9MSN broke the following news about an image currently appearing in the window of Ralph Lauren’s store in Sydney:
According to 9MSN:
The blogging website Photoshop Disasters posted an image today of an unknown model with a tiny waist posing in a Ralph Lauren advertisement.
The poster appears at the front of the Ralph Lauren store, located inside the Queen Victoria Building on George Street.
Ninemsn has also uncovered what appears to be the original image on
Ralph Lauren’s Australian website, plus another digitally altered
version of the same photograph in which the model’s already small waist
is even narrower.
WAS SHE NOT THIN ENOUGH ALREADY IN THE PHOTO ON THE RIGHT?
Oh Ralph, I’m pretty much lost for any more words other than DESPAIR
Your company claimed the release of the first image was a mistake. I find that hard to believe. But TWICE? Two images of women that are just utterly….sick?
It’s official. Could you crazy fashion people possibly show more contempt for women?
Top Comments
It seems to me that beside being skinnier she is also taller in the bust at least so they stretch her to look like that.
Filippa is just simply beautiful and I don't see where she is "fat"?
Amazingly stupid company with a strange/sickly preference for pre-teen or barely teen-looking (no breast, no hip, no waist) "women"...
I think that it is outragoues what people at big magazine companies are doing. Just because they are concerned that their magazine won't sell if the model isn't thin enough but in actual truth the magazine won't sell if there is a really thin person on the cover because everyone will be too ashamed to buy the magazine.
Also if the magazine companies won't to make everybody as thin as stick so that they can fire as many models as they won't for thinner rib showing models then it isn't fine because many peoples feelings will be hurt and nobody will not won't to show themselves and the world will be hid behind curtains.
It is absolutely disgusting and I think that the magazine busnisses should go out of businesse altogetehr and not be allowed to sell any more magazines.