American fashion model, Gigi Hadid, is the face of Reebok’s new #PerfectNever campaign. Their slogan is “Perfect is boring. It never changes, never improves and never shows you anything different.” Is anyone else as confused as we are? While Reebok does not outright say that #PerfectNever is an anti-beauty standards campaign, we still get the gist.
The company received a lot of backlash for making this decision, and this is how Reebok Women fired back.
Sorry, Reebok, but we just aren’t buying it. The commentary is going right over your head. We know everyone has their own personal flaws working against them and that’s difficult to deal with, but the woman you chose to empower “flawed” women and push the idea that perfect doesn’t exist isn’t exactly getting the point across.
A campaign that pushes perfection boundaries for women and creates an inspiring message of female empowerment shouldn’t have someone representing them that is everything that is considered perfect in this society. The Eurocentric standard of beauty is literally Gigi Hadid.
Gigi is a beautiful woman. No one is denying that. No one is saying that she isn’t allowed to have insecurities either. We’re all for empowering women, but how do we empower women that may be a little thicker? How do we empower women without clear skin? How do we empower women that don’t fit into this conventional standard of beauty that exists in our society?
If perfect doesn’t show us anything different, then why do we keep seeing women that look like Gigi Hadid with platforms such as this one? We are not asking for much. We would just like to see a campaign based around someone that isn’t the beauty standard that they are “fighting” against.