Macy’s: PR WAKE UP CALL!

Macy’s is receiving major backlash on social media platforms and in-store for selling plates. However, these plates are not what you’re thinking. These plates promote ideas of ‘portion control’ with lines that revolve around the plate. The lines get progressively small in sizes with sayings like ‘mom jeans’, ‘favorite jeans’, and ‘skinny jeans’ matching the outer line. 

Basically, the plate’s message is presenting food consumption with the jeans you should be wearing. Women all over the nation have tweeted at Macy’s for their ignorance of selling this in their stores, claiming this to be promoting eating disorders.

 

Allie Ward, tweeted at Macy’s to ban the plates in all fifty states. Ward states that she thinks these plates are targeting “moms to young girls to guys who dismiss centuries of crushing beauty standards and laugh them off”. She believes that this is promoting the awful societal norm of beauty in women, and shaming women for their food consumption. 

 

Ward also shares that she has had several friends suffer from eating disorders, which led to her tweeting about the plates. She exposes several stories about her friends “who cap off a good dinner by purging… who’ve starved themselves to be a certain size”. 

 

After international backlash, Macy’s quickly removed the plates and the company responsible for the plates, Pourtions’, has delivered an apology. The company claims that their main intention was below:

 

“All we ever meant to encourage. We ourselves use our glasses and plates every day to help us take our own advice. We know this is serious business. We also believe a touch of humor can, for some, be just the right touch” 

 

For Macy’s, this is a Public Relations (PR) nightmare. Dealing with this situation has caused major controversy within the company, and many have protested or stopped shopping here because of the plates.

I believe that the plates are very wrong, and they most definitely promote eating disorders and abnormal eating. I have friends who suffer with eating disorders myself, and the fact that a company can release a plate like this without seeing the problem with it makes me sick.

Females are judged by unbelievable standards in our society today, and promoting eating like this on a plate makes me question what society wants for us. If you eat too much, you’re automatically fat. If you eat too little, you’re automatically too skinny. What does society want from us? The picky and unreachable standards make me question the morality of our beauty standards today.

Article Link: https://adage.com/article/news/macys-body-shaming-dinner-plates-plus-prediction-about-att-cbs-spat-tuesday-wake-call/2185421