Forget Miley Cyrus. Check out Disney's Chinese underwear ad
Daniel Brook
Slate.com
April 29, 2008
The May issue of
Vanity Fair hits newsstands tomorrow, but it's already
made the cover of the New York Post. The issue features
a photograph of Miley Cyrus, star of the Disney
Channel's mega-hit Hannah Montana, clutching a satin
sheet to her otherwise naked torso. Cyrus quickly
disavowed the photograph, which was taken by Annie
Liebovitz: "I took part in a photo shoot that was
supposed to be 'artistic' and now, seeing the
photographs and reading the story, I feel so
embarrassed," she said in a statement. "I never intended
for any of this to happen, and I apologize to my fans
who I care so deeply about." Disney, for its part,
shared Cyrus' outrage. Disney spokeswoman Patti McTeague
told the New York Times that "a situation was created to
deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell
magazines."
Reading McTeague's comment over coffee yesterday
morning, I couldn't help but think of an advertisement
I'd seen a few months ago while on a reporting trip to
China. I was walking from my Beijing bed-and-breakfast
to a nearby subway station when I was stopped in my
tracks by a billboard that made the controversial 1990s
Calvin Klein underwear ads look artistic by comparison.
Staring down at the throngs of shoppers on Beijing's
Xinjiekou Nandajie Avenue, a busy commercial
thoroughfare about a mile west of the Forbidden City,
was a white girl who looked all of 12, reclining in a
matching bra-and-panties set adorned with Disney's
signature mouse-ear design. In a particularly creepy
detail, the pigtailed child was playing with a pair of
Minnie Mouse hand puppets. In the upper left-hand corner
was the familiar script of the Disney logo.
Not believing my eyes, and on an assignment that touched
on images of Westerners in the Chinese consumer's
imagination, I snapped a photo: (click
here to see the picture)
After reading of the Cyrus flap, I e-mailed my photo to Disney's McTeague. I was curious: How did the company square its position on the Liebowitz photo with its risqué billboard in China?
McTeague passed on commenting and forwarded the image to
Gary Foster, a spokesman for Disney's consumer-products
division. He called me from a business trip (to China)
to disavow the ad. "It has caught us totally by
surprise," Foster told me by phone from Guangzhou. He
explained that Disney contracts with a host of
licensees, who produce and market products for the
Disney brand. Foster said that licensees are
contractually bound to clear all advertising with
Disney's corporate offices. "We have literally hundreds
of licensees making our products. They are supposed to
submit any kind of imagery to us before it is used, but
it's hard to enforce that sometimes," he said.
Foster said he didn't know which ad agency prepared the
ad, how old the model was, or where the photo shoot took
place. But he was sure it was the work of a Disney
licensee: Shanghai Zhenxin Garments Co. Ltd., which
makes underwear for girls and teens. China is notorious
for its intellectual-property pirates, and Disney is a
frequent victim, with people illegally slapping the
Disney name and logo on items all the time. Could this
have been the case with the billboard, I asked Foster.
"No. Unfortunately not this time," he replied. He
assured me the billboard would be removed immediately.
It is legitimately difficult for a company as big as
Disney to keep track of all its subcontractors. Then
again, Disney has learned the hard way the importance of
keeping track: Disney's response to the billboard
recalls its response to exposés of labor conditions in
the factories of its Chinese licensees', where
subcontractors were actually breaking local wage,
health, and safety laws. Here, of course, it's rules of
taste and propriety that are involved, and the ad may
play differently to a local audience than it did to me
and Foster. The age of consent in China is 14, compared
with 18 in Disney's home state of California. "I don't
want to make excuses for them at all because it is not
anything that we would ever approve, but in other parts
of the world this is not unusual at all," Foster said.
"In fact, in Europe, they have similar type of taste, if
you will. Here in China that's not unusual at all, but
it's not usual for the Disney brand."
It may be a small world, after all, but not everyone
shares Burbank's mores, and you can't be too careful
protecting your brand: You never know when a Chinese
licensee, or an American glossy, will deviate from the
Disney way.