This week's Ralph Lauren Boycott in Chicago generated, at times, up to 50 advocates for better media and advertising images, but a recent Page Six summary on nypost.com reported that "a store manager" said there were only four people in attendance.
To which this reporter has only this to say: Somebody must have photoshopped away some sanity.
For what it's worth, the boycott, launched by filmmaker Darryl Roberts (America The Beautiful), is not so much about how many people venture out to rally, it's about, in part, sending out a message--through a grassroots campaign--to the corporate behemoths like Ralph Lauren to reconsider the images they are using in their ads. (By the way, it took Martin Luther King, Jr. some time to successfully launch a civil rights campaign.)
So, who needs to be heard here? The many millions of young girls and women that continue to be flooded with media images that tell them they have little or no value unless they are thin. These images are linked to promoting eating disorders, among other issues. They perpetuate the illusion that only when you achieve "thinness," will you be beautiful, adored and loved.
True, we all live in a world where this belief is rampant but it doesn't make it right, or true.
As for the Ralph Lauren Boycott, filmmaker Roberts and his posse have yet another one scheduled for 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 20 at the Ralph Lauren flagship store in New York City at 72nd and Madison.
Interestingly enough, that demonstration is being organized by NOW (National Organization of Women), the largest women's group in the United States. NOW's website, in fact, promotes the upcoming boycott, saying: "Get Your Photoshop Off My Body."
NOW isn't the only organization supporting Roberts' cause. The Campaign for Gender Equality, The Women's Therapy Centre Institute, IAEDP (International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals), The Canadian Obesity Network and ANAD (Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Eating Disorders) are also on board, as well as more than 5,000 people on Facebook.
Miss Indiana, Nicole Pollard is also a supporter.
Learn more about the issue at americathebeautifuldoc.com or at NOW. Catch up on how the boycott came to be in my previous blogs.
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Now, even though my eating disorder is long gone, that impulse to demean myself -- and all that I do -- remains. The shadow of judgment, if not confronted, will darken my writing.
IF women are naturally very thin and 6'4" - so be it.
But the scrawny unfleshed carcasses of the average "Mo-Dell" doesn't do much for me. And while these heftier chicks are much better, they all look like they could do with a quite a few less donuts and far more time on the bicycle.
That is if they own one. Or worse, can't even ride one.
Oh that's right, lifting cake into your face is working out - right - like doing weights at the gym.
I am not asking for Mizzz Muscles the Super Athlete who trains for the olympics and nothing but trains for the olympics and has a hard washboard stomach and no tits; but a woman who can run up 10 flights of stairs without needing oxygen, cigarettes and a case of donuts would be an ideal kind of starting point.
The "plus size" rhetoric is greying into fat, unfit and unhealthy.
Fat, unfit and unhealthy is being a LOSER by choice.
Even without the skinny model controversy, RL portrays a posh upscale gentrified lifestyle in his ads.
He tempts us to buy the clothes as a way to appeal to our fragile self-esteem as faux participant in a lifestyle & world that most of us will never be part of
Doesn't virtually EVERY ad for discretionary consumer products use the "buy this product or you're a loser" paradigm? Remember kids killing each other over sneakers? Status handbags, the latest cellphone? Grey Poupon?
How do I know so much? I spent years trying to lose those "damn 15 pounds" that were perfectly normal for my height and build. Learning self love, knowing that curves and "a little extra" are normal has to be taught.
Kudos to all who are in this grassroots movement to boycott Ralph Lauren. It's about time.
Kristen Houghton is the author of "AND THEN I'LL BE HAPPY! Stop Sabotaging Your Happiness and Put Your Own Life First" published by Globe Pequot Press
srsly?
Why is clothing store ads more important than ending the war?
srsly.
bring video cameras for the confrontations. Name the names of ad execs that are making money off this. Go after photographers.
These protests just help you to help yourself to think you are doing something for a small group. I'm sorry if that upsets you but its true. I'm sorry for these girls who think that they should be a certain way but its not necessarily a street in front of a store is going to make a difference. It just gives you a bit a press between wars and lindsay lohan.
Make some videos of you confronting them people about this. Post it on the internet and keep doing it. Eventually you'll have a larger following. Then open you own ad firm that takes pride in presenting what you want to present and wanna know something you may find a niche and really get big.
But street protests are so 1990s