H&M being blamed for choosing a dark swimsuit model

Swedish Cancer Society Cancerfonden blasted H&M Hennes & Mauritz Ab (OMX: HM B) in DN.se on Thursday. The patronizing opinion piece originated from the fear that particularly young people would be getting an unrealistic ideal from a recent advertising campaign, where H&M chose a Brazilian model who naturally appears more tanned than your average Swede, to contrast their swimwear. The worry here is that readers would then start to want to emulate the model in question and try to become equally tanned, risking deadly skin cancer.

While the issue is of course a serious one, as melanoma cases continue to increase world-over, Cancerfonden does not come out of this smelling like roses either. The authors of the opinion piece claimed the advertising campaign will result in H&M being responsible for numerous skin cancer deaths. Not only is that claim rather onerous, the innuendo here is that H&M should only use "certain type of models in its campaigns". H&M did not take criticism seriously at first, but as critical voices started to escalate the company, which is no stranger to controversial advertising, apologized for any perceived harm done and promised to look into the matter.