An illustrator cancels an activist’s prosthesis for a “body-positive” campaign.

This absurd story could be funny if it weren’t representative of the ability and limitations of body positive and sisterhood. For a campaign called ” Summer is ours too Wanting to be inclusive around the bodies on the beach, the Spanish Ministry of Equality recently commissioned an illustration from the artist Artemapache. This one, who is used to creating images that want to combat fatphobia, was paid 4,490 euros to carry out the work below, presented at the end of July 2022.

Behind this campaign that advocates acceptance, image theft and validism

The problem is that the illustrator was heavily inspired by photos of real people without asking for their consent, which may already raise doubts. But above all Artemapache replaced the prosthetic leg of one of the activist mannequins whose image he stole without permission: Siân Lord.

A positive campaign for the body that does the opposite of what it claims

The latter had a very bad experience of this manifest example of unconscious validism, as she recounts in an Instagram post published on August 2:

“This photo no longer shows me having fun in the pool with my friends… Now this image makes me extremely sad!

Since I found out what has been done to my image last Friday, my confidence has been at a minimum with anxiety taking over! My usual self-motivation tactics are failing me and now I find myself in a strange place!

[…] I’m not ashamed of my leg! It is a product of strength, resilience and independence. “

In the story of Instagram (which therefore only lasts 24 hours), Siân Lord also explained how it is one thing to use his image without his permission, and quite another to modify his body to replace his prosthetic leg.

A word of apology, a promise and then walk away

What increases the violence of this story tenfold is that it is a campaign to invite all women to accept themselves as they are on the beach..

On Twitter, keen eyes caught Artemapache’s jacket. Faced with the growing scandal, the illustrator ended up apologizing and promised to share her € 4,490 salary with the women she was freely inspired by (and Dafont from whom she plagiarized a font without paying the operating license ):

” After the justified controversy about the rights to the image of the illustration, I felt that the best way to mitigate the damage that can derive from my behavior is to distribute the profits which derive from this work in equal parts

[…] Hope I can solve as soon as possible, I assume my mistakes and that is why I am now trying to repair the damage caused, for now I will stay away from social networks and I will try to resolve the matter with the parties involved in private. “

Between the defense of the positive body and reality, there is much more than a few digital brushstrokes.

A photo credit: Instagram screenshot