Balenciaga apologises for bondage bear advert involving child

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They're also taking legal action against its creator

What I want to know is who the hell signed it off and why were the parents happy to let it go ahead?

I've included the images for anyone who hasn't seen them.

Good. The images were disturbing. What on earth were they thinking?

Omg!!!

Why have you included the offensive images?

No, that’s not good enough. Advertising campaigns are not just something that happen in the spur of the moment. The theme / content isn’t just down to 1 person. There would have been a team involved before the shoot, the models booked well in advance, the models would have had chaperones, the props would need to have been acquired.
So what has actually happened is that they have been called out for their extremely dodgy campaign and are now backtracking rapidly for damage limitation. There should be an independent investigation into how this child was placed in such a shocking situation.
Also, please don’t anyone forward the photos - this child needs to be protected, not have her image plastered all over the internet.

Well it's worked as a campaign as because of you putting the name of the company in the thread title I now know the name of this company I have never heard of before
I have also seen these sick paedophilic images. I would ask for thread ro be removed.

They deleted the images way before they issued an apology. They also had a photo of a woman made up to look like she'd been assaulted holding one of those bears.

Horrible.

What with them and Coach's disgusting misogynist model spitting and hurling abuse at women in New York, it reminds me how much fashion designers hate their customers.

Does one of the bears not also look like it's got black eyes?!

So that people can have some context as not everyone would be aware of the problem.

Surely this comes under child abuse?

Also, please don’t anyone forward the photos - this child needs to be protected, not have her image plastered all over the internet.

Absolutely. This is about the fourth or fifth time it’s been posted on mumsnet. If you come across an image you think exploits a child you shouldn’t be gleefully trying to increase the numbers who see it FFS.

In hindsight, I should have covered her face.

You're right to have included the offending images, OP, and thank you for doing so. We meed to know what we're talking about.

Yes, obscure the child's face but we need to see how far this dangerous stuff is reaching.

Tucker Carlson covered this and asked why no one else is (in America at least)

twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1595229989686972416?s=46&t=Lqp64pXiwVo5Pt0fH6AwrQ

I agree it's appalling and hardly likely to be one person gone rogue. Come on! That's barely credible.

They need to name and shame. It's the only way to stop this insanity. People need to be held accountable.

I had no idea this happened so if you mentioned it I wouldn’t know what you meant.

It’s gross but also why are they taking legal action against the creator - they would have signed it off?

Wow, just looked this up on twitter. The photos are horrific enough but then there are documents about a US court case about free speech and child sexual abuse images.

I hope those who created /signed off on this get properly investigated by the police.

Report your original post and tell hq you want to blur out the child's face.

I have not heard of this before nor of the brand. It is helpful info for me as will avoid it now. But yes, the child’s face should be blurred (though I wouldn’t have thought of it on my own) - can you take it down and upload a blurred version? - as I think a picture is worth a thousand words here - I v quickly realised how disturbing this is.

Yep, I came to add this.

One of the images in the set had a document on a table or the floor, can't remember exactly now. Some people on Twitter looked up the text of the document, and found that it was a document as described above.

They knew full well what they were doing; they included that document to make a mockery of it as well.

If the adverts weren’t included on the thread there would be posters saying it didn’t happen and if it did it wasn’t that bad.

Tucker Carlson used the expression "kiddie porn". There's no such thing. There is only child abuse and rape. I hate that the right are taking control of this narrative and using language that seeks to lessen or diminish the reality of it. Where's Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah

It's really upsetting that the only outlets reporting on this are the likes of Fox News and Tucker Carlson. And that the rhetoric is around 'sexulalising children'.

This is not 'sexualising children', these are images of child abuse. Children taking part in sexually provocative or explicit imagery is child abuse.

Stomach churning

My dh insists that this so called fashion brand or whatever the hell it is (I refuse to look it up and click on anything of theirs) is a mad social experiment to see what bloody awful tat rich people will buy just because it has that name on it.

I hadn't seen or heard about this. That's so distressing.