Oh, Shoot! The controversial Balenciaga ads that have received backlash for ‘sexualising kids’

Teddy bears, you’d like to believe, are harmless. But French luxury fashion label Balenciaga decided to come up with some twisted version of the stuffed toy and is now in deep trouble for it. A new holiday season campaign shows children with bags shaped like teddy bears wearing bondage gear. The brand has been facing backlash for the highly inappropriate advertisement. Now there’s a lawsuit involved and Kim Kardashian, a brand ambassador for Balenciaga, is outraged.

What was the ad about?

Two ad campaigns by the high-end brand are under the scanner. One of them involved teddy bears in bondage outfits – wearing leather harnesses and fishnets with “bruised” eyes and a chain locked on its neck. Two other pictures showed children hugging the teddy bear-shaped bags.

The campaign was being promoted on Balenciaga’s Instagram account, which has 14 million followers. However, it was pulled down after it received backlash for “sexualising kids”.

The ad was released at Paris Fashion Week and supported the company’s spring/summer collection. It drew attention to another Balenciaga campaign.

An earlier ad promoting a collaboration with Adidas featured a handbag placed on top of some documents. On zooming in, people found that the papers were from a United States Supreme Court ruling related to the use of indecent images of children.

What was the backlash all about?

After Balenciaga posted the images of the teddy bear ad on its social media handles, it started receiving criticism for the bondage gear used in them, with critics saying that it sexualised children.

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A snarky tweet from YouTuber June Nicole Lapine was widely shared. “the brand “Balenciaga” just did a uh….. interesting… photoshoot for their new products recently which included a very purposely poorly hidden court document about ‘virtual child porn’,” she wrote.

the brand "Balenciaga" just did a uh..... interesting... photoshoot for their new products recently which included a very purposely poorly hidden court document about 'virtual child porn'

normal stuff pic.twitter.com/zjMN5WhZ0s

— shoe (@shoe0nhead) November 21, 2022

As outrage grew, the label deleted all the images. Some right-wing American media channels have accused Balenciaga of promoting “child pornography”.

The fashion house continues to be under fire. Now Kim Kardashian has said that she was “shaken by the disturbing images” and its “re-evaluating” her ties with the label. In comments posted on Twitter, she said that she was quiet since the controversy erupted not because she wasn’t “outraged or disgusted by the recent Balenciaga campaign”, but because she wanted to understand how this could have happened.

“As a mother of four, I have been shaken by the disturbing images. The safety of children must be held with the highest regard and any attempts to normalize child abuse of any kind should have no place in our society — period,” she wrote.

I have been quiet for the past few days, not because I haven’t been disgusted and outraged by the recent Balenciaga campaigns, but because I wanted an opportunity to speak to their team to understand for myself how this could have happened.

— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) November 27, 2022

The reality TV star said that Balenciaga understood the seriousness of the issue and would take necessary measures to ensure “this never happen again”.

What is Balenciaga saying?

Amid the criticism, the fashion house released a statement on Instagram apologising for its controversial ad campaigns.

“We strongly condemn child abuse; it was never our intent to include it in the narrative,” the company wrote in the statement… Our plush bear bags and the gift collection should have not been featured with children.”

“This was a wrong choice by Balenciaga, combined with our failure in assessing and validating images,” it added.

Addressing the inclusion of the Supreme Court documents in the second ad, the fashion brand said, “All the items included in this shooting were provided by third parties that confirmed in writing that these props were fake office documents… They turned out to be [real legal] papers most likely coming from the filming of a television drama.”

Balenciaga attributed the “inclusion of these unapproved documents” to “reckless negligence,” presumably by a contract worker hired for the photo shoot.

Who are the people behind the ads?

The fashion house filed a $25 million lawsuit against the producers of the controversial ad campaign. The case is against the company North Six, Inc. and set designer Nicholas Des Jardins and his eponymous company for the inclusion in one of the ads of legal documents from a US Supreme Court decision on child porn laws, according to a report in The New York Post.

Balenciaga is seeking “redress for extensive damages defendants caused in connection with an advertising campaign Balenciaga hired them to produce,” the summons alleges.

The photographer of the teddy ad is also receiving online hate.

Gabriele Galimberti, known for his Toy Stories project, showing children photographed with their “favourite” toys, said, “I am not in a position to comment on Balenciaga’s choices, but I must stress that I was not entitled in whatsoever manner to neither chose the products, nor the models, nor the combination of the same.”

“As a photographer, I was only and solely requested to lit the given scene, and take the shots according to my signature style. As usual for a commercial shooting, the direction of the campaign and the choice of the objects displayed are not in the hands of the photographer,” he said in a statement.

With inputs from agencies

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