Equinox: the Anti-Gym

Aimee wrote another great post; this time on Equinox Gym's New Year's ad campaign.

One gym this year based out of New York has taken their marketing to a whole new level. Equinox Gym's New Year’s marketing shows pictures of extremely skinny models doing out of the gym activities.  Here are just two of their advertisements.

I am happy to say that there has been a negative response to these ads.  Equinox’s Facebook account was flooded with complaints from their customers saying that their models look unhealthy and anorexic.  Equinox and the fashion designer photographer, Terry Richardson, are also getting all kinds of criticism from the general public.  ABC even published a very short article for which “Neither Terry Richardson nor Equinox returned requests from ABC News for comment.”

I suppose that kind of thing is to be expected when a company hires a fashion photographer to create their ad campaign.  Nevertheless, this strikes me as just plain weird.  Maybe that's because I've never been to an Equinox Gym.  Maybe the women who pay to attend those gyms really do want to be starved, emaciated and weak.  If so, they don't need to pay for a gym to achieve that goal.  Here's a quote from the ABC article.

Fashion news site Fashionista wrote, “The girls are undoubtedly thin-but they have some definition. The Equinox location in SoHo is overrun with models, and many of them I’ve seen there are a LOT thinner than these girls.”

"They have some definition"?  Where?  And these women are supposedly fit and healthy because they're not as starved, emaciated and weak as other models?  Really?  That's your standard of health and fitness?  Again, I suppose that's to be expected from a fashion website.  I give up.  I don't get it.  I'll never understand why so many women pay these people so much money for their twisted opinions.  

What I understand least is Equinox.  They run gyms.  They're supposed to promote health and fitness.  If they think those models represent health and fitness, they clearly don't know the definitions of those words.  If, on the other hand, they know those models don't represent health and fitness and they're selling that image to their customers anyway, that means they're deliberately committing malpractice in their field.

And their customers are paying for it.

No thanks.  I'll stick with Crossift.