Luxury fashion brand Balenciaga received vitriol on social media for its advertisements that featured children holding stuffed animals adorned in bondage gear.
One of the advertisements featured a young girl wearing a black T-shirt from the brand. She held a strap in her hands that was attached to a harness fitted to a white stuffed bear. The stuffed toy was decked in a mesh top, leather bracelets and anklets and a chain necklace with a padlock pendant.
A second advertisement featured another young girl in a matching violet T-shirt and shorts and lavender-colored athletic shoes. She was holding a lavender-colored stuffed bear wearing a body harness and a choker with little diamonds.
Moreover, a third advertisement from the Paris-based fashion house curiously included a court document pertaining to child pornography. American YouTuber June Lepine, known by the online moniker "shoe0nhead," pointed out the "poorly concealed" document in a tweet.
According to a report by News.com.au, social media sleuths deduced the document to be from the 2022 Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition ruling. The case decided on by the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a ban on virtual child pornography. At the time of the decision, the high court found that the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 violated freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment as no children were harmed in the production of computer-generated images.
The fashion brand did not immediately respond to queries by various media outlets. However, it removed the offending advertisements from Instagram – where they were first posted – following backlash on social media.
Users express outrage over offensive Balenciaga advertisements
Several users took to Twitter to express outrage over the fashion house's offensive ads.
User @thisissavvy1 wrote: "I thought people were trolling, but nope, it's real. Maybe this is why Balenciaga left Twitter. They don't want to be accountable. Yes, these are children holding teddy bears dressed in bondage outfits."
User @philipedsel meanwhile rebuked the advertisements as "gross and infuriating." He wrote: "I try my best to avoid what seem like conspiracies here on Twitter, but they intentionally included this child porn reference in their shoot."
Another user remarked: "Frightening how many adults must have been involved in this. Parents, photographers, creative directors, copywriters, web designers, design agency staff, producers, managers [and] advertisers – and not one of them thought 'Hang on a minute'?" (Related: UK doctors receive training in 'gender unicorn' and 'genderf*ck' identities.)
A fourth user expressed disgust: "Even if the rest is too 'conspiracy theory' for the small-brained people out there, why would you have a child holding a teddy bear with bondage gear on? So gross."
A fifth user sarcastically tweeted: "Balenciaga using photos of little girls playing with teddy bears dressed in bondage gear on their website. Lovely."
Interestingly, Balenciaga joined the many companies who left Twitter after Tesla CEO Elon Musk took over its leadership. The brand confirmed that it has deleted its Twitter account, but did not share additional details.
Head over to Groomers.news for more stories about advertisements that sexualize children.
Watch this video of TikTok users commenting about Balenciaga's advertisements that feature stuffed animals in bondage gear.
This video is from the Beautifulhorizons2 channel on Brighteon.com.
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