People aren’t happy with this company’s body shaming ad in the London subway
There’s no denying that Khloe Kardashian is looking amazing these days, but there’s an advertisement floating around London’s subway system that uses an image of her body in an insensitive way. In an attempt to sell a protein powder that will allegedly give you a body like Khloe’s in 30 days, Protein World has posted an ad all over London, and people are really not happy about it.
The tagline is “Can you keep up with a Kardashian?” And it insinuates that if you can’t keep up with Khloe (aka, have the body she has — which, may we add, is airbrushed and digitally altered, so come on guys), you don’t have a desirable body. This kind of advertising is subscribing to the idea that all women (and men) should have a certain kind of body to be considered attractive. And that certain kind of body falls under a very narrow rubric.
Khloe Kardashian's Protein World Tube advert sparks fierce body shaming row https://t.co/SFfz60Oovc pic.twitter.com/CMyExnnlix
— The Mirror (@DailyMirror) February 17, 2017
According to Protein World, we should all dream of achieving a body like this photoshopped Khloe, which is sets a damaging example for people. Twitter users had a few things to say about it. false false
I can't be the only one who gagged at the @ProteinWorld kardashian poster? Shall we all stop trying to cash in on female insecurity? #gross
— Rhiannon Jones (@RhiannonEJones) January 29, 2017
This isn’t the first time Protein World has been called out on insensitive advertising that could potentially make women feel insecure about the skin they’re in. In 2015, they posted an ad that asked women if they were “beach body ready,” whatever that means. The posters featured a very thin, very photoshopped woman who reflected the kind of narrow body standards we see time and time again.
It became such an issue that London mayor Sadiq Khan demanded the ads be taken down in order to “stop promoting unrealistic expectations about body image and health”. It seems like Protein World maybe didn’t take note.
Bottom line? There’s nothing wrong with your body the way it is. It’s ready to “keep up” with Khloe any day of the week.
