H & M model photographs

[Clafoutie]

I realise this isn’t a new thing. And I realise that H & M are not alone in this. But my eye was drawn by an H & M advert on this site and when I visited the H & M website I was appalled by the photos of models there. A lot of them are no doubt AI generated and modified, but they are presenting images of women who look unwell. I thought the fashion industry was moving on from representing women in this way. I was naive.

Once again slim women get called emaciated, lollipop heads, delusional, prepubescent...
Yay body positivity!

underweight models shouldn’t be used but at the same time we also shouldn’t be using overweight models unless specifically advertising larger sizing clothing.

overweight is equally not what we should be promoting and I don’t think it’s going to help sell clothes is the models look big in them.

No she doesn't. She has a youthful body. People come in a huge variety of sizes.

Why do you find it acceptable to diminish slim women?

We have, tho probably not in the direction you think! 62% of adult females are overweight in the UK, a figure that has been rising steadily for decades - and they haven't changed the criteria, statistically, almost 2 out of 3 of us are clinically overweight (and I'm in the 31% within that who are in the obese category myself, so not a slender person judging others..).

We have supermarkets full of food thats far too sugary and/or fatty to be a sensible choice for anyone, and restaurants serving mains that have almost the number of calories we need in a day.

All this means that the average size of woman you see in the street, is going to be heavier than is healthy, and someone who may appear 'skinny', may not be underweight at all.

She looks fine to me.

Whilst we are ripping apart perfectly healthy looking young women what about these models, no one starts that's talking about how unhealthy they are....

But being tall and slim ≠ unhealthy

I think some of it is down to digital alterations though, to me these proportions don't make any sense - her legs are different sizes for a start!

This is so unhinged, it’s not even masked as concern, it’s just vile. You alright hun?

They are very much healthy.

Looking at the pics perfectly actually. They have been gifted with incredible body proportions.

And I am first to say when people are looking too thin. I won’t name names but the ozempic celebs have really bought that look back.

If people are confused it’s probably because for so long we haven’t actually had underweight models in photos. The arm and thigh bones are a key giveaway. There’s a lot of healthy fat on upper arms there.

You are wrong. She is at the slim end of a normal distribution curve for young women. But it’s def not obviously abnormal. I certainly wouldn’t be diagnosing anything from a photo like this.

What on earth is wrong with her? She looks fine to me, slim but not underweight to my eyes.

Unfortunately you can't operate a wish list of how you'd like women's bodies to look.

I personally would like to see fewer fat children and teenagers because I know they're storing up a lifetime of expensive problems for themselves, but I don't (usually) voice it.

Young women are slimmer than older women. Some young women are slimmer than other young women. Some young women have small boobs and visible collar bones. Some young women are really tall. Some young women are beautiful and wear clothes well. That's why they're models.

I think the women in these pictures look fine, just slim. They’re not bony or emaciated looking. My DD is at least as slim as this and eats like a horse. She’s 5’11 too.

I think it’s preferable to the parade of morbid obesity you see on the Snag website. I say this as a size 18 myself.

H&m model

Sorry, pic didn't show last time. This pic for example, looks like poor digital editing to me.

Really?!

This is a mad thread. The H&M models look healthy. That isn't to say that if they were a bit bigger, they wouldn't be healthy. They ARE slim. But just that. Slim. Slim isn't unhealthy.

You can’t tell that from the photo, you can literally only see her arms.

They all look great to me and I think I can recognise underweight when I see it. I’m jealous if anything- I’m not overweight at bmi 22 but I’m short and a bit flabby, no where near as healthy looking as these women.

You are being ridiculous. My body looks like that. Bit flabbier as I'm 50+. I've always been a size 10. I eat more than my husband. @MyOtherProfile

She’s not clearly underweight, she is clearly tall, at least 5’ 9’’.
Being tall and slim is not unhealthy.

Let's assume they are very tall, like 180cm/5ft11, and weigh 60kg/9st6. That is still a healthy BMI according to the NHS.

I think that collectively, as an overweight population (on average), our view of what is healthy is very distorted.

This thread 🤦🏻‍♀️ 🤯

It's quite usual for H&M, Zara and various other brands to dress the models in clothing a few sizes larger. Also, H&M is usually large to size anyway. But, that's by the by, the model is a perfectly healthy weight. She doesn't look too thin, emaciated, ill, or any of the other ridiculous things written in this thread.

I think they all look healthy and a good weight. I'm a size 10 and bordering on being overweight according to the NHS, and I'm well aware that I could do with losing a few kilos to be healthier.

You could argue that it's worse to show larger models because that's technically unhealthy (but we don't because weren't we done with judging each other's bodies?)

This picture?? Really? You’re saying she looks too thin? She looks completely normal and healthy.

Until I had had children in my late 30s, I had this figure, so did most of my friends.

I think people are now just justifying being over weight by all this real woman shit.

I don’t come from the Kate Moss school of nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, I come from the school of ‘everyone knows a size 10 is the ideal dress size’.