YSL battered for anorexic Elle ad

Yves Saint Laurent, a company hardly known for its use of “real women”, has been battered by the ad watchdog for using a model who looked like she hadn’t had a proper meal for months in an ad promoting its fashion brand.
The spot appeared in Elle magazine – another brand which seems to revel in the use of skinny females – and featured a black and white photograph of a woman lying on the floor with her hands on her head. She had her eyes closed and was wearing a short black dress, a leather jacket and high heels. Just one Elle reader, out of a circulation of over 150,000, complained to the regulator.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, YSL said it did not agree with the complainant’s view that the model was unhealthily thin, but did not provide a detailed response. For its part, Elle, a magazine which claims it is for women who love fashion – by women who love fashion, trotted out the classic “no comment”. The ratecard for a single page ad in the magazine is £123,000.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that the model’s pose and the lighting effect in the ad drew particular focus to the her chest, where her rib cage was visible and appeared prominent.
It added that the model’s legs, particularly where “her thighs and knees appeared a similar width and looked very thin” meant the she appeared unhealthily underweight in the image.
Banning the ad from appearing again in its current form. The ASA warned YSL to ensure that the images in its ads were prepared responsibly.

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