Sophia Bush has declared war on Urban Outfitters after they marketted a t-shirt with the words ‘Eat Less’ on the front.
The One Tree Hill actress, in an entry on her personal blog, called for them to issue an apology and make a donation to a charity for eating disorders, and said, “It’s like handing a suicidal person a loaded gun. You should know better.”
Sophia wrote, “To promote starvation? To promote anorexia, which leads to heart disease, bone density loss, and a slew of other health problems, not least of all psychological issues that NEVER go away? Shame on you. I will no longer be shopping at your stores. And I will encourage the tens of thousands of female supporters I have to do the same.”I will challenge this. Urban Outfitters also sells tshirts will beer on those tshirts.. also books on how to make your own beer! So what if someone was a recovering alcoholic? Note, alcoholism never “goes away” either. One day, this person is walking down the street, and happens to see someone wearing this tshirt; which causes him to feel anxious, and then relapse.
Don’t know if you followed me, but basically.. It is not Urban Outfitter’s deal if someone has an unfavorable rxn to one of their tshirts, but it is the person’s rxn that reflects negatively on that tshirt.
(via wallacefennel—deactivated20110)
I COMPLETLEY disagree with the comment directly above.
So basically it’s a persons own fault if a shirt, that’s for women only presumably, has a negative impact on their eating habits? As a big chain and one that plenty of people, particularly young women follow, Urban Outfitters should know far better than to basically promote eating disorders. And yes, although this t-shirt doesn’t say ‘get yourself an eating disorder’ it promotes managing your eating habits in what would become an unhealthy way. Also, the model this shirt is on definitely doesn’t need to be eating less. If this shirt was modelled by someone far larger then some arseholes would try the ‘well it’s promoting healthy eating cos she needs to loose weight’ argument but I don’t have to deal with that now as the model doesn’t need to eat any less (not that I’m considering her weight judgementally) and also, the above arsehole argument I just outlined would be fat-shaming so that would be another argument for another day. Also, anyone who knows Urban Outfitters should know they wouldn’t use models any bigger than the one in this picture.
Women have to deal with having distorted body images, pressure to look a certain way and shaming if they don’t thrust upon them on a daily basis, we’re almost drowning in it and most of it isn’t as explicit as this. This shirt promotes the idea that, regardless of how much you eat already (which hopefully is a perfectly healthy amount) you should be eating less than that. Furthermore, this shirt completely normalises the idea that women (women only I reiterate cos I doubt there’s a male version of this shirt and I’d be surprised it if it was unisex) are in part defined by the amount they eat and that now it’s not only not a bad thing to obsess about eating unhealthily but that it’s actually fashionable because a hipster chain like Urban Outfitters have now promoted it!
I can only imagine that this shirt would have a negative impact on women already struggling with eating disorders. Not ever having had an eating disorder myself I don’t want to generalise about how people who have them feel but I will say that surely anyone with an eating disorder needs encouragement and support to recover from it, and definitely not encouragement that it’s fashionable and trivial enough to print on a t-shirt.
