Movie Promos Called Out for Fat Shaming
The adage "All publicity is good publicity" doesn't apply to the creators of the marketing campaign for the upcoming animated film Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs. The children's movie, supposedly a positive parody of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was taken to task on social media for using fat shaming tactics it its ads. Its billboard ad, first spotted at Cannes Film Festival last month, shows the classic version of Snow White (read: tall and thin) next to a shorter, fatter version of herself with the tagline, "“What if Snow White was no longer beautiful and the 7 Dwarfs not so short?” The promotional clip shows two princes spying on Snow White undressing, only to discover her morph shorter and heavier. While a New York magazine reporter spotted the billboard at Cannes last week, it wasn't until Tess Holliday discovered it two days ago tweeted the image to Red Shoes actor Chloë Grace Moretz and asked,"How did this get approved by an entire marketing team? Why is it okay to tell young kids being fat = ugly?" Moretz responded via tweet, "I have now fully reviewed the [marketing] for Red Shoes, I am just as appalled and angry as everyone else, this wasn't approved by me or my team." Sujin Hwang, one of the film’s producers, responded to the film's publicity backlash via Entertainment Weekly that Locus Creative Studios has “terminated” the campaign and “wishes to apologize.” The film is scheduled to be released sometime next year, but there's no word if the South Korea-based animation studio will redo its publicity campaign.