A Swedish model and artist has taken to Instagram to share her experience after she posed for Adidas with unshaven legs.
When Adidas shared the campaign image they commented on Arvida Byström’s photography “which questions femininity and gender standards using so-called ‘girly’ aesthetics”.
And many applauded Arvida byström’s confidence, dubbing her a feminist hero for her strength to stand out in the notoriously picky fashion industry.
Twitter was loving it:
Then Byström shared the photo on Instagram and revealed she had received a barrage of abuse through her direct message inbox.
“Me being such an abled, white, cis body with its only nonconforming feature being a lil leg hair,” she wrote.
“Literally I’ve been getting rape threats in my DM inbox.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to not posses all these privileges and try to exist in the world.
“Sending love and try to remember that not everybody has the same experiences being a person.”
Byström’s post received more than 32,000 likes and more solidarity came through via Twitter.
Then Byström came through with a post a few weeks later, stating that while she is personally a feminist, that doesn’t by default make her work feminist.
“Me being in an Adidas campaign is great fun, it is a company I enjoy working with and that makes cool stuff, but since all companies are very integrated in our capitalistic system they are inherently non-feministic in the sense that this system is built on imperialism and that to me can’t be feministic,” she wrote.
“So even though I have hairy legs in an ad campaign I guess to me it doesn’t make me a hero of any kind and also not more of a feminist.”
HuffPost UK has reached out to Adidas for comment and will update this article upon their response.