Customers are furious and ready to start boycotting both companies.
Both companies have been called out for fat shaming and promoting eating disorders on two entirely different circumstances but both incidents happened the same week.
Macy’s is being accused of “promoting fat shaming and Food guilt” after they were called out for selling plates with different sections scrolled on the plates. Each plate indicated how much to eat in order to fit into a certain size of jeans. The smallest portion of course being “skinny jeans.” Then the medium portion being “favorite jeans” and the largest section being “mom jeans.”
After the post was tweeted, literally thousands of consumers responded with indignation by calling out Macy’s for their distasteful design. Stating that it encourages people to feel guilty about eating and that they need to eat less in order to be skinny. Hence promoting fat shaming and eating disorders, quite a serious allegation.
Even though the consumers were demanding that Macy’s ban these plates immediately, some were actually trying to find our where to purchase them. Other tweeters noticed how small the “skinny jean” portion was and wouldn’t even be able to hold two chicken nuggets.
The plates were made by a company called Pourtions and deeply regret how their plates have been misinterpreted. They were just trying to make a playful approach to eating portions that encourage healthy eating habits.
Macy’s responded by making an announcement that the plates have been removed and banned the plates from being sold in their stores. They have already removed the plates from their stores and apologized to the general public.
Forever 21 was sending something extra to their plus-size customers this week and it has made them furious. The popular fashion retailer has been called out for fat shaming by sending their plus-sized customers a diet bar, as a special promotion.
As you can imagine they were not impressed and went straight to Twitter and Instagram to share with the world, the unsolicited “special promotion” gift of an Atkins diet bar sample with their orders.
For example, Gigi (@Gigicurious) July 23, 2019 wrote: Thanks @Forever21 I have received my order of 5 items from the plus section… oh and this #atkins bar that slipped in there. I don’t take kindly to people telling me how to live my life. Oh, and when you were packing the diet bar, you forgot to put in my actual invoice!!
Other plus-size customers wrote similar posts, many wondering if they had sent these diet bars to non-plus women too. Others were furious at the indirect message that the Forever21 is trying send out to them, by telling them maybe it is time to lose weight.
The posts have been rolling in as more and more plus-size customers got their online orders with the Atkins diet bar. Forever 21 has been called out for body shaming, being fat-phobic, insensitive and promoting eating disorders.
Forever21 was not as quick as Macy’s at handling the complaints from their customers. But they responded with a public statement saying: “From time to time, Forever 21 surprises our customers with free test products from third parties in their e-commerce orders. The freebie items in question were included in all online orders, across all sizes and categories, for a limited time and have since been removed. This was an oversight on our part and we sincerely apologize for any offense this may have caused to our customers, as this was not our intention in any way.”
Hopefully retailers such as Macy’s and Forever21 learn that in this day and age, there is no room for slight oversights such as what happened this week.