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After seeing the insulting way a clothing site decided to advertise a pair of plus-size shorts, a designer decided to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Hello Giggles recently shared an article, slamming the poor advertising display fashion site Wish used to sell a pair of plus-size shorts.
Instead of having an actual plus-size woman model the shorts, Wish chose to have a skinny model step inside one leg of the shiny black shorts.
Christina Ashman, a plus-size designer from Bristol, who runs the label Interrobang, couldn’t even believe her eyes when she first saw the ad.
“I thought it was the worst example of marketing I’ve ever seen!” Ashman told BuzzFeed News. “If you’re aiming a product at a certain demographic, you should be using an example of that demographic to show how it would actually look on them.”
“Plus-size shorts should be shown on two plus-size legs - not a whole petite body inside one leg,” she added.
In an attempt to show Wish how ridiculous it was to have a skinny model try on clothing clearly designed for a plus-size woman, Ashman decided to put on her own photo shoot.
“To highlight how ridiculous the original photo was,” Ashman said, she modeled a small skirt around one of her thighs.
“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 captioned the photo on her blog.
While Ashman posted the photo jokingly, it struck a chord with many women all around the world, who believe the fashion industry is constantly reinforcing negative body image issues, especially in young girls.
“The fashion industry is constantly trying to make people feel bad about their bodies to make money, and it’s not right,” she told BuzzFeed News.
On her own website, Ashman tries her best to use plus-size models of all shapes to encourage others in the fashion and design community to recognize that beauty is not one-size-fits-all.
“People come in all shapes, sizes and colours, but only a very small cross section of people are used to sell clothes,” she said. “Even plus-size brands use the smaller end of the plus scale to sell their clothes, when the whole spectrum are buying them.”
