“H&M: Where Pseudo-Sustainability Meets Diversity Porn”
“the ad includes a sort of festival of other “others,” resulting in an awkward spectacle of diversity porn that begs to be shared and tweeted by all those progressive and free-thinking folks who have no problem letting multinational companies into their hearts, minds and closets…
Yes, it’s absurd. Yes, it’s random. And yes, it’scalculated. Like any shrewd retailer, H&M wants you to buy their products, no matter your race, religion, size, age or gender identity. While I strongly support more and better media representations of Muslims, Sikhs, members of the LGBT community, older women and people of color, I’m not about to commend H&M here. For one, their most prominent ads still tend to feature unnaturally thin white women.
More importantly though, squeezing as many minorities as possible into a single one-and-a-half-minute clip full of badly executed stereotypes is not an ideal way to go about promoting genuine diversity or acceptance. If anything, such tactics tend to further otherize and exoticize members of the different minority groups represented by lumping them all together and limiting their inclusion elsewhere amid the majority…
Feminist hijabi women like Hanna are not just opting out of rigid Western standards of beauty by choosing to cover, many are also opting out of the consumerist culture that perpetuates such standards. This powerful act of resistance threatens advertisers and corporations that rely on their constructed notions of beauty”
The festival of others.
Not as bad as Urban Outfitters, but still :/