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.

This sort of stuff is so interesting (and shocking and scary of course). Has anyone else ever looked at the Vigilant Citizen website? I expect they will cover this in due course.

picklemewalnuts you are right, the tape end ending on an A is the most plausible thing. And under all other circumstances one wouldn’t think twice about it. But considering that the whole picture (and all pictures in the series) appear to be carefully arranged, plus the other allusions… does raise questions, whether this was intentional, an inside joke, as you say.

@JackGrealishsLegs yes I have happened across the vigilant citizen site. IMHO a lot of it is reaching in the extreme, the author attributes almost everything in pop culture to monarch mind control.
Whilst it is true that intelligence agencies have used mind control for decades and project monarch was a real thing I fail to see the link between that and the music industry. I don't think for example that Katy Perry is a manipulated CIA puppet.

I suspect that the site is either a bona fide whack job or a government operation to discredit legitimate conspiracies by association.

You prompted me to check the vigilant citizen site and sure enough they have put out an article on this already.
Predictably it's full of the usual Monarch mind control bollocks but it contains some info regarding the photographer's past public tweets, which if true are quite disturbing and does appear to indicate that the campaign has the intention of attempting to normalise paedophilia.

Article in the Guardian on Balenciaga, bit of a puff piece but a bit more critical at the end.

www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/25/645-pound-adidas-stan-smith-trainers-fly-off-the-shelves-at-balenciaga

Well the Guardian has rather drawn their line in the sand havent they?
Rather than oppose the images it refers to them as little more than a footnote in some pseudo fashion article detailing a pair of trainers!

Would the trainer article have been run where Balenciaga not already in deep shit? Of course not.

The Guardian knows that the left leaning media will be vilified for their silence on the issue and so they decide to print something entirely disingenuous?

They must be under the impression that we are all really fucking stupid...

So basically all this controversy, and the guardians take is they should promote the dirty looking trainers? 🤣
Wouldn’t expect anything less from them 🤦‍♀️

Oh come on. Someone at Balenciaga saw the pics, signed them off, thought they were fine. This is not a'mistake'. It was deliberate. Do they think we're all stupid??

@PicturesOfDogs at this point I don't think the Guardian can even be bothered to pretend to take a dim view of paedophilia.

I fully expect them to be sympathising with the 'MAPs' rather openly in the not too distant future. Owen Jones will probably dress himself in their flag as an act of solidarity 🙄

Jesus bloody wept.

@piedbeauty No.
They think we're really fucking stupid.

That Guardian article is a joke. It's "let's hide it right at the end and hope no one notices it" but "look, we did report it". Bastards.

Nothing from the BBC yet.

Yup, the timing of thr Guardian article is .... interesting.

So according to the article and the interviewed fashion-expert, the true problem of Balenciaga, the thing that people now turn against, are the worn out shoes, Sadomaso-bears one sees in their campaign (which also shows kids and court papers btw.) which signal poverty and this Dystopian vacationing in poverty is a no-go.

I should probably not deign this garbage with any further comment, but to point out the obvious: their campaign showed neither children nor court case containing offices that were struck with dystopian poverty.

"Look, a squirrel!" - the guardian

5 years ago or so, when I was reading around the reporting of two specific crime cases, I came to the crushing realisation that the Guardian had been lying to me and had some deep misogynists at its core. They have proved me right.

Based upon my previous experiences, I now don't think it's unreasonable to guess there's a nonce or two working there.

What‘s up with the Guardian, anyway? Years back the comment section for all kinds of political stories were closed down, apparently deemed too dangerous. But one could still comment on food, travel and fashion. Now even fashion is off limits?!?

Assuming the rules where this was done are the same as UK rules, the parent or guardian would have been sat there watching the entire shoot.

Then they would have signed a release form for Balenciaga to use the images.

The parents were all fine with it, so the photographer et al would have felt themselves validated

There was an article in the Mail yesterday whereby the father of one the children did the It was all fine and lovely, the children were happy, it was a great day, we would have removed our children if we thought it wasn't, people are reading too much into it stuff. He stood up for the photographer, said the staging had nothing to do with the photographer.

The question he failed to address was: why were children being used in the first place to advertise adult products? Those ugly bags are not aimed at children nor is any of the other stuff in the photographs, this father obviously can't and won't accept that his child has been used to promote something that the overwhelming majority of sensible parents would say an absolute NO to.

The fact that the parent thought the children were quite happy in a totally inappropriate situation and it didn't occur to him that his boundaries were FUBAR is not really making things any better.

This is all going to the NSPCC's new line that children have only been abused if they didn't like what happened to them. Oddly enough they only shifted to this appalling view after the TQ+ political agenda captured them.

There's a common feature in all this.

This is all going to the NSPCC's new line that children have only been abused if they didn't like what happened to them

Really? Jesus 🤦‍♀️

There's a common feature in all this.

There certainly is nilsmousehammer, it goes hand in hand with the NSPCC's initial support for their rubber wanking employee couched in the phrase bring you whole self to work and this was after his blase attitude to safeguarding was exposed.

They only caved to his removal when their hand was forced.

This is all going to the NSPCC's new line that children have only been abused if they didn't like what happened to them.

So like what Peter Tatchell has said.

This is all going to the NSPCC's new line that children have only been abused if they didn't like what happened to them

Where do they say that?

This is from NSPCC website which seems to me to be the opposite to the new line you mention. It specifically said they might not know it’s wrong.

What is sexual abuse?
When a child or young person is sexually abused, they're forced or tricked into sexual activities. They might not understand that what's happening is abuse or that it's wrong. And they might be afraid to tell someone. Sexual abuse can happen anywhere – and it can happen in person or online.

It's never a child's fault they were sexually abused – it's important to make sure children know this.

That seems to have been significantly and positively tightened up! The discussions are here on FWR, and would have been about the time that the NSPCC bottled the webchat with MNHQ. At that time their definition mentioned abuse being something the child disliked, which many MNetters found disturbing.

Found this is CNN Style - so not the main news section, where this story belongs:

edition.cnn.com/style/article/balenciaga-bondage-bears-intl-scli/index.html