Retailer pulls 'Fat is not beautiful' sweatshirt following public outcry

Sweatshirt article

Wow.

I know right?

To be fair, that horribly written article waits until the readers and shocked and horrified before admitting that there is a story about why the shirt says this. (Part of an anti-bullying campaign that has a line of shirts quoting real, nasty things that people have said to celebrities). So this particular quote was written to / about Lena Dunhum, and Lena agreed to participate in the clothing line's campaign.

So it wasn't done mean-spiritedly. Quite the opposite. But out of context, the message on the shirt is horrifiying :)

I understand that it was intended to be an anti-bullying campaign but still have to question who thought it was a good idea. It's not like people wearing that sweatshirt, or the other items in the line, would be walking around handing out pamphlets with "the context is"; as far as I've seen, they didn't even have anything on the back that said anything to indicate it was anti-bullying, like "kind of shocking to see that first hand, don't bully (I am clearly not a marketeer). This was probably well intentioned AND destined to backfire.

Apparently that tiny type at the bottom of the shirt says "as said to Xxxx" (or something similar), and was supposed to explain the "context." Except nobody is going to read that tiny type. They were idiots but at last they pulled them and apologized.

Very true -- sometimes there's grace in how a mistake is handled. They also had intended to donate a share of the profits to an anti-bullying organization and they went ahead and made a donation outright -- definitely well intentioned and working to fix! I always tell my team that if they make a mistake with the right intentions, we can usually fix it -- and hopefully that will be the case for these people here.

That was my thinking, when they come up with these "great" ideas do they really think them through? And who approves this stuff?

I wonder if they put along with anorexia & bulimia on the back of the shirt would this be deemed acceptable too? Would they be talking about context in small xxx's on the bottom? I think it was mean-spirited because in this society it's still ok to target & demean fat people as opposed to praising thin ones.