Clothing brand Snag has been overwhelmed with complaints after people think that their models are ‘too fat’ and are the target of ‘hateful’ posts about their weight
A clothing brand says it is inundated with more than 100 complaints a day about its models who are “too fat.”
The brand, Snag was a hot topic in an online thread about whether adverts showing “unhealthily fat” models should be banned. It comes after a Next ad was given the chop after a model appeared “unhealthily thin.”
Boss Brigitte Read says models of her size 4-38 clothing are frequently the target of “hateful” posts about their weight.
The UK’s advertising watchdog, the ASA, said it received 61 complaints about models’ weight in 2024, with most of them about models who appeared to be too thin. There were only grounds to investigate eight of them, and none were about Snag.
Catherine Thom, a 36-year-old from Edinburgh, contacted the BBC to say she found it “hypocritical to ban adverts where models appear too thin for being socially irresponsible, however when models are clearly obese we’re saying it’s body positivity”.
Meanwhile, a Reddit thread had more than 1,000 comments with many along the same theme. Catherine said she was “bombarded” with “images of obese girls in tights” after buying from the brand when she was pregnant.
She told the BBC : “I see Snag tights plastering these morbidly obese people all over social media.
“How is that allowed when the photo of the Next model isn’t? There should be fairness, not politically correct body positivity. Adverts normalising an unhealthy weight, be it obese or severely underweight, are equally as harmful.”
However, Snag founder Ms Read thinks the idea of banning adverts of models with bigger bodies is a a societal symptom of “fat-phobia,” and added: “Shaming fat people does not help them to lose weight and actually it really impacts mental health and therefore their physical health.
“Fat people exist, they’re equally as valid as thin people, they buy clothes and they need to see what they look like on people that look like them. You are not worth less the bigger you are. Models of all sizes, shapes, ethnicities and abilities are valid and should be represented.”