Nike slammed for choosing 'too thin' Bella Hadid as latest face

Bella Hadid recently announced that she was joining the Nike family, posting a picture of her standing below one of the sportswear giant’s billboards.

The 20-year-old model may have been welcomed with open arms by the fashion industry but Nike fans have criticised the brand for choosing an ‘unhealthy’ model, claiming Bella is ‘too thin’ to be the face of fitness.

Comments accusing Nike of encouraging eating disorders in young women have also been left with one Instagram user saying: “I love her but how is she modelling Nike? She looks malnourished and unhealthily skinny. Nike is about muscle and fit. Just don’t see the correlation.”

“Sports brands need to use an athletic-bodied person to model. I’m not wearing Nike gear to get skinny, I’m wearing it to get in shape!” read another strongly worded comment.

A spokesperson for the Beat charity warned about the dangers of such body-shaming comments, telling The Huffington Post: “It’s not possible to tell just by looking at someone whether they have an eating disorder. We encourage celebration of people for the things they do, rather than the way they look. As a society, we all have a responsibility to promote healthy body image.”

Bella isn’t the only Hadid facing a bout of body-shaming. Her older sister, Gigi, recently hit headlines after supposedly being too overweight to model revealing clothes on the Tommy Hilfiger runway. (The designer has cleared this up.)

Both sisters are set to show off their enviable figures in the Victoria’s Secret show on November 30 in Paris.

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Watch Bella Hadid audition for the Victoria’s Secret fashion show