The boss of online clothing brand Snag has told the BBC it gets more than 100 complaints a day that the models in its adverts are “too fat”.

Chief executive Brigitte Read says models of her size 4-38 clothing are frequently the target of “hateful” posts about their weight.

The brand was cited in an online debate over whether adverts showing “unhealthily fat” models should be banned after a Next advert, in which a model appeared “unhealthily thin”, was banned.

The UK’s advertising watchdog says it has banned ads using models who appear unhealthily underweight rather than overweight due to society’s aspiration towards thinness.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 61 complaints about models’ weight in 2024, with the vast majority being about models who appeared to be too thin.

But it only had grounds to investigate eight complaints and none were about Snag.

Catherine Thom read the BBC report about the Next advert ban and got in touch to say she found it “hypocritical to ban adverts where models appear too thin for being socially irresponsible, however when models are clearly obese we’re saying it’s body positivity”.

The 36-year-old from Edinburgh was one of several people who contacted the BBC with this view, while a Reddit thread had more than 1,000 comments with many along the same theme.

Mrs Thom says she was “bombarded with images of obese girls in tights” after buying from Snag when she was pregnant.

“I see Snag tights plastering these morbidly obese people all over social media,” she says.

“How is that allowed when the photo of the Next model isn’t? There should be fairness, not politically correct body positivity. Adverts normalising an unhealthy weight, be it obese or severely underweight, are equally as harmful.”

But Snag founder Ms Read says: “Shaming fat people does not help them to lose weight and actually it really impacts mental health and therefore their physical health.”

She thinks the idea of banning adverts showing models with bigger bodies is a symptom of society’s “fat phobia”.

Of her 100 staff, 12 are dedicated “just to remove negative comments and big up those promoting body positivity”.

“Fat people exist, they’re equally as valid as thin people, they buy clothes and they need to see what they look like on people that look like them,” she says.

“You are not worth less the bigger you are. Models of all sizes, shapes, ethnicities and abilities are valid and should be represented.”

Sophie Scott is a 27-year-old salon owner from Lossiemouth in Scotland who has modelled for Snag, and received positive and negative comments about her size on social media.

“I get either ‘you’re so beautiful’ or ‘you need to lose weight’. When I started modelling I was a size 30. Having lost weight since then I’m still on the receiving end of hate comments because it will never be enough for some people.”

Sophie is used to online comments telling her she is “unhealthy”, but says, “fitness is not measured by the way you look. They are making assumptions, they don’t know me or my activity levels.

“People say ‘you’re glorifying obesity’ but I don’t think anyone is looking at me and saying ‘I want to look like that’. Perhaps some people are looking at me and saying ‘she has a similar body type to me’.

“When I get a message from someone saying ‘we are the same size and you’ve inspired me to wear what I want’, it takes away from every hate comment I get.

“If I’ve helped one person accept their body then the hate comments don’t really bother me.”

Fashion journalist Victoria Moss believes the “depressing” debate shows society is not used to seeing bigger bodies in advertising campaigns.

“You’d be pretty hard pushed to find genuine plus-size models on retailers’ websites because even a mid-size is a 10/12 and plus is 14/16 which is actually around the average size for a woman in the UK,” she says.

“The issue with adverts showing very small or very big models is the context and the provocation. We know people with eating disorders seek out images of very thin people as ‘thinspiration’. But if anyone sees a picture of a bigger person they’re not going to drive to buy 10 McDonald’s to try to get fatter.”

Jess Tye at the ASA told the BBC the watchdog gets about 35,000 complaints a year about all advertising, and in 2024 received 61 complaints about 52 adverts relating to the model’s weight.

She says an advert will be investigated if it could be seen to be encouraging people to aspire to an unhealthy body weight. Adverts simply promoting body confidence and using a model who is relevant to the product’s size range would not be investigated.

“It’s to do with the wider societal context. We know in the UK currently society tends to view thinness as aspirational and that’s not the case for being overweight.”