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“Body-shaming” adverts are apparently about to disappear from the Transport for London network. Under a plan introduced by Mayor Sadiq Khan, adverts that promote an unhealthy body image will be banned from next month. It follows last year’s infamous ads for "health store" Protein World, which featured a skinny airbrushed model in a bright yellow bikini and the slogan: “Are you beach body ready?” Over 70,000 people signed a Change.org petition asking for the posters to be removed, claiming that the intention of the advert was to make consumers feel “physically inferior to the unrealistic body image” presented. Hundreds complained to the Advertising Standards Agency, which ruled that the adverts could not appear again due to their claims about health and weight loss, but nonetheless that they did not breach its rules on harm, offence and social responsibility.
There's a debate to be had about the benefits or otherwise of this approach. Few would deny that we have a problem with the “ideal” body types projected by advertising, and little tends to change without someone stepping in to make it happen. On the other hand, there are good reasons why we might want to limit those interventions as much as possible.
Either way, I can't help but think that Khan has set himself an impossible task.
Sexism in advertising generally, and the projection of a particular body type as the only one worth aspiring to specifically, is ubiquitous: switch on a television, open a newspaper or walk down a street and there it is in front of you. Nor is it limited to advertising. Movies, music videos, clothing stores, magazines and social media all teach us the same thing: that you are worth less if you do not look a certain way.
The harmful effects of this are obvious. According to the 2014 British Social Attitudes Survey, a third of adults agree that “your value as a person depends on how you look.” Half believe that it affects how much you can achieve in life. Other surveys have found more than half say they sometimes feel ashamed of how they look, and almost three-quarters of British women say they feel under pressure from television and magazines to have a perfect body. Girls as young as five have expressed concerns about their weight.
For women particularly, it can have a huge impact on the way we live our lives—from avoiding social situations to lacking confidence at work, the terrifying amount we spend on make-up each year (up to £2,000, according to some estimates) and the 725,000 of us, men included, who suffer from eating disorders. Our self-worth is too tightly bound up with how we look, or how we think we look, and it stops us from flourishing in other areas of life.
Khan has authority over only a very minuscule proportion of our country's advertising space; we can't blame him for that. But the challenge he faces is how to draw the line. He has identified his target as “ads which could reasonably be seen as likely to cause pressure to conform to an unrealistic or unhealthy body shape, or as likely to create body confidence issues, particularly among young people.” But the problem is not just adverts like Protein World, which explicitly refer to body image; it's also the thousands that surround us every day that appear to have nothing to do with our bodies, but which silently comment on the way we should look. The impossibly perfect women pictured lounging on sofas in furniture stores; the skinny, airbrushed beauties selling us perfume; the sexualised models used to advertise shampoo or ice cream or holidays. It is the cumulative effect of these images that does the real damage, far more than any individual advert.
We can debate the merits of the method. Whether or not consumer pressure or other means of change would be more appropriate here than regulation, the goal of the ban is a laudable one. But we can't approach this issue with tunnel vision. Adverts like the Protein World poster are a drop in the ocean compared with the challenge we're facing.
Now read: Women's clothes are still utterly impractical—where are my pockets?
“Body-shaming” adverts are apparently about to disappear from the Transport for London network. Under a plan introduced by Mayor Sadiq Khan, adverts that promote an unhealthy body image will be banned from next month. It follows last year’s infamous ads for "health store" Protein World, which featured a skinny airbrushed model in a bright yellow bikini and the slogan: “Are you beach body ready?” Over 70,000 people signed a Change.org petition asking for the posters to be removed, claiming that the intention of the advert was to make consumers feel “physically inferior to the unrealistic body image” presented. Hundreds complained to the Advertising Standards Agency, which ruled that the adverts could not appear again due to their claims about health and weight loss, but nonetheless that they did not breach its rules on harm, offence and social responsibility.
There's a debate to be had about the benefits or otherwise of this approach. Few would deny that we have a problem with the “ideal” body types projected by advertising, and little tends to change without someone stepping in to make it happen. On the other hand, there are good reasons why we might want to limit those interventions as much as possible.
Either way, I can't help but think that Khan has set himself an impossible task.
Sexism in advertising generally, and the projection of a particular body type as the only one worth aspiring to specifically, is ubiquitous: switch on a television, open a newspaper or walk down a street and there it is in front of you. Nor is it limited to advertising. Movies, music videos, clothing stores, magazines and social media all teach us the same thing: that you are worth less if you do not look a certain way.
The harmful effects of this are obvious. According to the 2014 British Social Attitudes Survey, a third of adults agree that “your value as a person depends on how you look.” Half believe that it affects how much you can achieve in life. Other surveys have found more than half say they sometimes feel ashamed of how they look, and almost three-quarters of British women say they feel under pressure from television and magazines to have a perfect body. Girls as young as five have expressed concerns about their weight.
For women particularly, it can have a huge impact on the way we live our lives—from avoiding social situations to lacking confidence at work, the terrifying amount we spend on make-up each year (up to £2,000, according to some estimates) and the 725,000 of us, men included, who suffer from eating disorders. Our self-worth is too tightly bound up with how we look, or how we think we look, and it stops us from flourishing in other areas of life.
Khan has authority over only a very minuscule proportion of our country's advertising space; we can't blame him for that. But the challenge he faces is how to draw the line. He has identified his target as “ads which could reasonably be seen as likely to cause pressure to conform to an unrealistic or unhealthy body shape, or as likely to create body confidence issues, particularly among young people.” But the problem is not just adverts like Protein World, which explicitly refer to body image; it's also the thousands that surround us every day that appear to have nothing to do with our bodies, but which silently comment on the way we should look. The impossibly perfect women pictured lounging on sofas in furniture stores; the skinny, airbrushed beauties selling us perfume; the sexualised models used to advertise shampoo or ice cream or holidays. It is the cumulative effect of these images that does the real damage, far more than any individual advert.
We can debate the merits of the method. Whether or not consumer pressure or other means of change would be more appropriate here than regulation, the goal of the ban is a laudable one. But we can't approach this issue with tunnel vision. Adverts like the Protein World poster are a drop in the ocean compared with the challenge we're facing.
Now read: Women's clothes are still utterly impractical—where are my pockets?
