Zazzle profiting from body hatred
As if there’s not already enough girls whose lives are being destroyed through eating disorders, the on-line UK seller Zazzle.co is doing its bit to make even more girls sicker and to spread further suffering.
This t.shirt (left) is inspired by a motto uttered by model Kate Moss “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. It is marketed to children through a line of “size-zero slogan” products created by US based label Teen Modelling. Even babies are expected to promote the food-is-bad ideology.
‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ is used as ‘thinspiration’ for girls through pro-anorexia websites. It is employed to strengthen the resolve of a sufferer, to help them exercise willpower and self-control in their quest for ultra-thinness.
Zazzle refuses to take any responsibility, stating: “Zazzle is a custom products platform, it enables all users to create their own products that feature their own content. In this way, Zazzle is an outlet for users to express their personal opinions and viewpoints.”
As long as Zazzle makes money hosting these tees with their killer slogans, that’s the main thing. Profits over the wellbeing and health of girls.
One in 100 girls in Australia suffers anorexia. Anorexia Nervosa is the third most common chronic illness for adolescent girls in this country.
Yet too many companies seem to want to hasten them to an early grave.
I wrote about this ‘I love anorexia’ t.shirt (left) earlier in a piece titled ‘Anorexia kills girls: don’t say you love it’.
I also featured the personal account of a young woman survivor of the disease, who wrote about how the impact of glamourising the disorder on sufferers like herself.
Here’s what I had to say about the Zazzle t.shirts on The Morning Show recently:
April 20th, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Oh god, just disgusting. As i was waiting for this article to load, i was thinking ‘how bad can it be? we have a nation of obese people….’ I thought maybe these shirts would just be non-PC jokes. Wow, how wrong i was! I find it mind boggling that there are sites promoting these eating disorders and they are run by ADULTS, aimed at killing young girls. And then, for a company to happily make a profit from it…..ugh
April 20th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Oh FFS.
There is a report violation button at the bottom of the page, you can get the person shut down if you don’t like it. It’s nothing to do with Zazzle, it’s the moron who set up the shop.
This kind of hysteria does nothing for your cause.
April 20th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
This is awful, totaly awful. How can anyone even consider making fun for this or making money out of it? I myself am not much older than the children these t – shirts are aimed at and I have an 8-year-old sister. The thought of her, or one of her friends wearing this t-shirt is sickening and I hope that it never, ever happens.
April 20th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
I can understand Zazzle not picking it up immediately – they are a site like eBay, cafepress or Etsy where anyone can upload their own content, and hundreds of new items are loaded per day. However, I CAN’T understand them leaving it there once it was drawn to their attention. Their guidelines for sellers include the following:
” * No content that can reasonably be viewed as harassing, threatening, or otherwise harmful
Any products that are deemed unacceptable by the rules above, or deemed offensive or in bad taste at the sole judgment of Zazzle will have the products cancelled and removed from the Marketplace with or without notice.”
I would have thought these t-shirts fit into the “otherwise harmful” category, not to mention “in bad taste”. Zazzle could remove these items if they chose. Why they are choosing NOT to remove them is a mystery to me.
April 20th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
Does The Morning Show run the SensaSlim infomercials? I’ve seen them on Kerri-Anne and The Circle, it’s a diet product that uses the same slogan… Just hoping they’re not quietly undermining your great comments!!
April 20th, 2011 at 7:51 pm
I had a friend in high school who nearly died from anorexia. It was yrs of hell for her. I remember being able to carry her, she was that tiny, and I remember visiting her in hospital, a few kgs away from heart failure.
Anorexia stole many yrs of her life.
I doubt she’d find these shirts funny.
Shows that you can market pretty much anything and there’ll always be someone stupid enough to buy it.
April 20th, 2011 at 8:11 pm
Hi Melinda
we have a bunch of people discussing this on FB. My suggestion is that we politely ask Zazzle to consider stopping production of products like this, and donate any profit already taken to an organisation such as Free to Shine (.com) Goodness knows people need all the self-love and appreciation they can get!
April 26th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
S.,
The report violation button is an absolute joke when you’re talking about an organisation who deems pro-rape t-shirts acceptable for sale. What we have here is a company happy to profit from the sale of products which are dangerous to consumers, who refuses to take responsibility for doing so. Of course the ‘moron who set up the shop’ has seriously dirty hands but Zazzle ain’t no whipping boy here…
PS ‘Cause’?