The image was met with quite a backlash as fans accused the McCartney label of promoting a bad body image. According to The Independent, several commenters thought the model looked sickly, and didn’t appreciate the message behind having such a thin model being promoted in this way. One angry fan opined, “Appalling image. This young lady is clearly very ill and the body image being used is all that is wrong with the fashion world.”
Another offended Instagram follower was equally surprised and angered by the image: “Considering what a huge influence Stella is on young people and as the mother of a young girl I’m appalled at the…pic.”
After receiving quite a lot of criticism, McCartney’s people replaced it with one of Malaika Firth, which fans applauded in the aftermath of the situation. “Much better! Glad to see you listen to your fans,” one user wrote, adding, “Please tell the other girl to seek treatment, she’s clearly sick.”
While the above commenter and her cohorts have no information about the health of Ms. Park, they maintained that their outrage didn’t stem from any sort of bias against slender women. It’s about putting out a positive body image. “This isn’t thin hating,” one follower wrote, “it’s just a lot of people want a healthy image of the body to be presented through fashion, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
McCartney has since released a statement apologizing for the misstep: “We should have been more mindful… It was a quick snap done backstage that was misleading. We listened to our followers and we took it down and replaced it. We can only apologise if we offended anyone.”
[via The Independent, Daily Mail]
