Everyone from Kim Kardashian to Kerry Katona has tried the waist-training craze, and now the people behind it are trying to get us mere mortals on board with it.
But a UK shopping channel has got itself into trouble when trying to make sales of the Velform Miniwaist, being accused of promoting an unhealthy body image by telling women what a “normal” body should look like.
The Shop Channel attempted to get teleshoppers to pick up the phone by showing a number of women squeezing in their waists with the band, showing a before and after shot.
But the presenter went on to say the following:
“Women are supposed to look like this, and men like this… But very often, especially as we age, we lose that figure. It’s not just you. Fortunately now, there’s a way to get that womanly figure that identifies us, that creates that fabulous, perfect and extreme hourglass figure that all women want.”
And this didn't go down well with the viewers.
The Velform Mini Waist product was promised to be the “secret to getting that sexy, tiny waist, so small that you’ll be everyone’s envy."
If that wasn’t enough to body shame viewers at home, the model went on to say: “I’m doing everything I can do for this waist but there has to be something else to get that teeny tiny waist like the girls in the pictures and in the magazines.”
People who made complaints against the channel branded the infomercial harmful for suggesting women strive to this size.
The ASA said that the advert was to be removed due to breaking the UK's social responisibilty code, and that it must not appear again.
On the matter, the Advertising Standards Authority said:
“It was irresponsible to imply that a very small waist should be aspired to and that all women should aim for that figure.
“We were concerned that in some shots the women were shown compressing their waists to appear extremely small and that, particularly in the context of the aforementioned claims, this added to the impression that women should aspire to very small waists. Overall, we concluded that the ad encouraged unhealthy body perceptions and was therefore irresponsible.”
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