This international ethical beauty brand attempted to promote their packaging-free, eco-friendly beauty products, instead they were shot down for going too naked.
Have you ever thought about where all the packaging encasing your beauty products go once you're done using it? All those shampoos, moisturisers and body creams. Plastic is fantastic, right?
One of Lush's Solid Shampoo bars is the equivalent of 2-3 bottles of shampoo. Wow. And, no plastic - no packaging at all.
Ever since Lush Cosmetics landed in South Africa, I have been a great fan. Their products are fun. Colourful, playful (again, solid shampoos, hello?) and their products are always so cleverly named, e.g.Grease Lightning, a super effective spot cleanser.
So, let's get to the controversy shall we? Lush Australia rolled out a new campaign in August to promote their wonderful package-free products (not all their products are package free, but they are all eco-friendly). The campaign also wanted to focus on promoting body-positivity, according to Buzzfeed.
A few members of their colourful staff (it's basically like gaining a few new super enthusiastic besties every time you step inside one of their stores) volunteered to be part of their "Go Naked" campaign. Women of all shapes and sizes modelled for the campaign.
The result was just beautiful:
Images: Lush Cosmetics
But, unfortunately for Lush (and humans everywhere), ad watchdog Advertising Standards Board (ABS) received a number of complaints from customers and members of the public about this campaign. Most took issue with the fact that the ads were displayed at the eye level of children. Others complained about the "women touching women" bit, while the rest said the nudity was pushed unnecessarily - nudity for the sake of nudity apparently.
Um, firstly won't this educate children in the ways of naked bodies? And yes, that there are in fact various body types. That you should not be afraid of your nakedness? That it's not ugly? Images like these can only help children to accept their bodies.
Secondly, naked women touching naked women...*gasp*, oh the humanity! This was clearly a campaign about body-positivity and about the nakedness of the products, which might help our delicate earth just a bit, so why people had to sexualise this, is beyond me.
Lastly, it had to be naked. Because, well, that's the whole point.
According to the CosmeticsBusiness.com, ABS admitted that they did not see the ads as sexually suggestive, and that "most reasonable members of the community would understand and accept that the nudity in the advertisement is not pornographic or overtly sexualised".
But no, people are just not that reasonable. So they had to uphold the complaint and the ads were removed from stores.
But before I start ranting about the closed-mindedness of SOME people.
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