Graphic anti-anorexia campaign goes viral

A graphic new anti-anorexia ad campaign has been shared hundreds of thousands of times on social networks.

The ‘Say no to anorexia’ images — created by Brazilian modelling agency Star Models — use Photoshop to stretch shockingly thin women to resemble life-size fashion illustrations.

The digitally manipulated models appear next to a typical designer’s sketch to show how unrealistic and exaggerated fashion drawings are.

The images run alongside the tagline “Say no to anorexia. You are not a sketch”.

It’s a message that has resonated with more than 200,000 girls and women, who have shared the photos on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networks.

“This is a BRILLIANT idea! I AM NOT A SKETCH! I am a real woman, the girl next door, the mother, the daughter, the best friend, the wife,” one fan wrote.

“I am not a sketch and I embrace each extra kilo with every passing year!”

Another, UK teenager Chloe Manuel, added: “This is a brilliant idea. I’m a 14 year old girl, and the majority of people don’t know just how bad the media affects us young girls.

“Body image issues need to be taken way more seriously. I know people in my year who have eaten nothing but ice cubes and sunflower seeds, as they read it was ‘the best diet trick’ around.

“Hopefully this campaign can drill through not just to vulnerable girls but to adults as well who are naive to this kind of thing.”

But others have criticised the campaign as shifting the focus from fashion magazines, modelling agencies and catwalk shows to designer’s sketches, something most women have limited access to.

“Unfortunately, this smacks of passing the buck,” Dodai Stewart wrote on women’s website Jezebel. “Studies show that girls and women of all ages are influenced by magazines when it comes to how they picture an ‘ideal’ body. These magazines feature models, not sketches.

“It’s as though Star Models wants to shift the blame away from themselves, suggesting that if the designers would create clothes for average bodies, the agency wouldn’t have to seek out and hire very thin women.

“Maybe there’s some truth in that. But our society’s fetishisation of thinness goes a lot deeper; it’s tied to concepts of wealth, glamour, health, aspiration, sex appeal, self-control, socio-economic dominance and aesthetics, and changing it will take a lot more than a ‘just say no’ ad campaign.”