SPANISH clothing chain Zara has put its foot in it again, and this time on a global level – the high-street staple's 'Love your curves' advertising campaign, featuring two very slim models in skin-tight jeans, was ridiculed on Irish radio this week.
The most international brand of the Galicia-based fashion empire Inditex, Zara has been pulled up by the public before with some of its less-than-advisable ideas: in the past few years, it has had to withdraw a T-shirt which closely resembled the uniforms worn by Jews in Nazi concentration camps, and his-and-hers baby-gros which bore the slogans, 'Pretty like mum' and 'Clever like dad' for being 'too sexist'.
The two young models who illustrate the 'Love your curves' advert would be, assuming they are of average height, approximately a size six to eight, or 34 to 36 in Spain.
Although the campaign was released in February, it has only gone viral now thanks to a tweet by Irish radio presenter Muireann O'Connell – the cleaned-up version of which reads: “You have got to be kidding me, Zara.”
In a second tweet, Ms O'Connell clarified: “Can I just say, there's nothing wrong with the models. It's the marketeers [who] have distorted their image and [expletive]-ed up.”
Muireann O'Connell's tweets have triggered a spate of memes, including a GIF of The Voice judge Cheryl Fernández-Versini face-palming, a picture of two chopsticks, and a girl with a magnifying glass and the caption, “Looking for them curves, like.”
One Twitter user criticised Muireann's views, saying: “Why is it okay for you to denigrate slim girls? Everyone has curves. Body-shaming of slim girls appears to be perfectly fine, eh?” Adding that her own slender 15-year-old daughter "gets called 'ironing board' by her delightful classmates."
“No, not at all. This isn't about the models, this is about the marketing campaign,” O'Connell clarified.
Photograph posted by Muireann O'Connell on Twitter (@MuireannO_C)
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