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Photos of Lilly Pulitzer offices reveal fat-shaming cartoons

Photo via The Cut
Photo via The Cut

If a notable website is going 

to publish a slideshow of your offices, it might not hurt to do a quick “Will this offend anyone?” sweep of the place before the photographer starts snapping away.

Unfortunately for the folks at iconic American brand Lilly Pulitzer, no one thought to remove a series of fat-shaming cartoons from an employee's desk — and The Cut readers noticed.


“Just another day of…fat, white, and hideous,” one cartoon reads, adding the horrific note: “You should probably just kill yourself….”

“Put it down, carb face,” reads another, captioning a cartoon of a woman in a too-small bikini.

The photo was posted in the office-tour slideshow without comment.

One Twitter user pointed out that the next photo in The Cut slideshow was off an impressive display of food, including untouched trays of cupcakes and macaroons.


"This is a clear case of the 'you can't sit with us' mentality," plus-size model Michelle Renee tells Business Insider, adding that “fat is not what Lilly has represented.”

"As a larger woman who can still fit in the largest sizes of their regular range, I plan on taking a trip to their store out here and see how I am treated."

The fat-shaming photo comes in the wake of the lifestyle brand’s recent collaboration with Target — and the criticism that its much-awaited plus-size offerings were only available online and not in stores.

The reason: previous plus-size clothing with other designer collaborations didn’t sell well, and Target wanted to test the waters to see how online sales would fare, instead.

Some criticized the move as forcing plus-size customers to prove there’s a demand for larger sizes and, essentially, “vote with their dollars.”

“Plus-size women shouldn't be treated like second-class customers — if they're going to patronize your business, they should at least have the ability to shop in-store for the same products. The burden should be on the retailer to serve its shoppers, not on plus-size women to prove their worth,” wrote Meghan DeMaria for The Week in January.

Read more criticism about the brand and its association with privilege, at Jezebel.

"These illustrations were the work of one individual and were posted in her personal work area. While we are an employer that does encourage people to decorate their own space, we are a female-dominated company and these images do not reflect our values," Lilly Pulitzer spokesperson Jane Schoenborn tells Yahoo Canada. "We apologize for any harm this may have caused."

Since the photo, which was originally presented without comment went up, The Cut has added this disclaimer: "This image shows the personal illustrations of an employee not pictured in this story."

An earlier version of this story originally claimed that the illustrations were on the fridge in Lilly Pulitzer's kitchens. We apologize for this error.