Snow White actress Chloe Grace Moretz calls out her own movie promos for fat-shaming
“Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs” was supposed to be a positive parody of the Disney classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” but the film is being accused of fat-shaming and misogyny after promos were released.
Even the actress who voices Snow White says she’s “appalled.”
The movie, said to be about a “Princess who doesn’t fit into the celebrity world of Princesses – or their dress size,” has yet to be released.
But an ad for the film showed up at the Cannes Film Festival last month.
It shows an animated Snow White standing thin and tall, next to the shorter and heavier version of herself. The billboard reads, “What if Snow White was no longer beautiful and the 7 Dwarfs not so short?”
Locus Creative Studios also released a trailer. In the clip, two dwarfs hide in Snow White’s room and watch her undress. When she removes her red shoes, she transforms into a heavier girl who slumps down on the couch and burps. The dwarfs look at her disgusted.
The glimpses were sufficient to spark a good deal of online comment.
Plus-size and body positive model Tess Holliday tweeted an image of the photo and wondered how it slipped through a whole marketing team. “Why is it okay to tell young kids being fat = ugly?”
Chloe Grace Moretz, who is the voice of Snow White in the film, also took to Twitter speaking out against the marketing campaign. “I am just as appalled and angry as everyone else,” she tweeted.
Moretz has been vocal on her views on feminism and has said she turns down roles that sexualize women.
Some on Twitter didn’t think the ads were a big deal. “Really think people are being overly judgemental. Bad ad doesn’t mean bad movie. The people working on the film know the script. We don’t,” Ben V. Decker tweeted. Sujin Hwang, one of the film’s producers, told Entertainment Weekly that the marketing campaign “is being terminated.”
She also said: “Locus Corporation wishes to apologize regarding the first elements of our marketing campaign (in the form of a Cannes billboard and a trailer), which we realize has had the opposite effect from that which was intended.”
“Our film, a family comedy, carries a message designed to challenge social prejudices related to standards of physical beauty in society by emphasizing the importance of inner beauty.”
The body positive movement has gained traction in recent years. Several hashtags on social media have hundreds of thousands of photos such as #effyourbeautystandards and #loveyourcurves.
The exact release date for the film is unclear. But the film’s website says “2018 Coming Soon.”