How Avon and Jameela Jamil went too far in body-shaming ad debate

British actress Jameela Jamil called out Avon UK on Twitter for body shaming women into feeling bad about themselves for having cellulite. The particular Avon UK ad encouraged women to put an end to cellulite with their product, and she was having none of it.

Jamil then further expounded on this tweet in a note she posted on Twitter later. In it, she said she takes body shaming seriously due to similar shaming she has received in her profession and out of a desire to help young people refrain from feeling bad about themselves.

As a result of this one woman’s complaints on Twitter, Avon apologized, removed the messages, and said it would not market messages in that way again.

As a woman with a more-than-flawed body, I can resonate with Jamil’s outrage to a point. It isn’t accurate to advertise a product toward flawed women with an airbrushed photo of a model we should all replicate. That’s not just impossible (and certainly the model has her own flaws too), but it’s disingenuous marketing. Companies that advertise beauty products should be more inclusive and include women of all different shapes, sizes, and flaws — not just to sell their product, but to assure women that there is incredible diversity in the world.

That said, this particular display of anger toward a company like Avon seems like Jamil sat a bit too long in the outrage tent. All marketing (whether it’s Gillette, Apple, or Amazon) is a ploy to deceive and manipulate consumers. Everyone’s message is simply this: Your life is worse without our product. If you want to have a better life, buy our product! This takes many forms, but it’s what marketing does — it’s a lie, wrapped in a myth, inside a fable of fairy tales.

While I often see glossy women’s magazines and feel bad about myself, I also want to participate in self-improvement too. I’m not saying this Avon product actually does get rid of cellulite, but what woman wouldn’t want to? Does it mean Avon is shaming women because they know women don’t want to have it? (And trust me, women don’t want to have it simply because it’s gross, not because they think all women don’t have it.) Is Mitchum shaming men for body odor by advertising deodorant? Is Playtex shaming women for their periods by advertising tampons? Of course not.

While Jamil does make the point in her Twitter diatribe that she is mostly looking out for teenagers who do not yet understand the manipulation at play when a company markets a product (and this is an excellent point) it doesn’t necessarily mean the solution is to be so outraged that companies back into a corner of submission, vowing never to advertise again. It is an adult’s job to point out the fallacies between real life and marketing ploys, just like it’s adults’ jobs to point out the differences in any other arena, like film, television, and the Internet.

While I fully support a movement that is more inclusive of women in advertising, and I wish more companies would portray women of all shapes, sizes, colors, and bumps, I think this particular move went a little too far in the wrong direction on the outrage meter.

Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.