Photoshopped Ralph Lauren model fired for being too fat

Did you see the badly photoshopped Ralph Lauren ad making the rounds on the internet last week?

If you missed it, the model in the ad had been clearly edited- so much so that her pelvis appeared smaller than her head. While Ralph Lauren (the company) attempted to strong arm the image off the blogosphere, BoingBoing held their ground to use the image under fair use.

…instead of responding to their legal threat by suppressing our criticism of their marketing images, we’re gonna mock them. Hence this post.

As Wendy Seltzer from the Chilling Effects project said, “Sounds like a pretty solid fair use case to me. If criticism diminishes its effectiveness, that’s different from the market substitution copyright protects against. And I’ve rarely seen a thinner DMCA form-letter.”

While the company claimed that the image was mistakenly released by a Japanese department store, Filippa Hamilton, the 23-year old French model, told press that Ralph Lauren had fired her for being overweight. At 23, 5’10” and 120 lbs., Hamilton’s face is familiar to anyone who has seen Ralph Lauren print ads in recent years, but even at her abnormally low weight, the company claims she’s too fat to fit into their clothes. Ralph Lauren admits that Hamilton was fired, explaining the termination came “as a result of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract with us.”

Hamilton didn’t mince words in her reaction to the termination of her contract:

Hamilton, who had modeled for the designer since 2002, said in response: “I think they owe American women an apology, a big apology; I’m very proud of what I look like, and I think a role model should look healthy.”

[Source: Radar Online]