No Filter

The billboards have changed. Five years ago fashion advertising was all hairless bodies, skeletal things airbrushed until they barely looked human. Now it’s completely flipped—cellulite, stretch marks, hair, actual fucking skin. Monki, the Swedish brand, made it explicit with #NoFilter: we’re selling underwear to girls who don’t look like Ariana Grande, who look like people with bodies.

It’s a real correction. The old standard was insane. But the mechanism is identical, just with opposite aesthetics. They’re still selling you an ideal. The old ads made you feel wrong because you didn’t match them. The new ones make you feel like you’re supposed to embrace being imperfect—which is nice until you realize it’s a strategy to sell you underwear you probably already own.

I’m not saying that’s cynical exactly. It’s just how advertising works—there’s always a calculation underneath. And if that calculation corrects something broken in the industry, fine. There’s real value in showing diverse bodies instead of one impossible standard. But once destigmatization becomes a product feature, it’s still a feature. The brand moves inventory and looks good doing it. That’s the deal.

The old version said be thin and hairless. This one says be yourself. Except yourself, as packaged back to you in a billboard, is just another standard wearing different clothes. Whether that actually helps people or just trades one set of anxiety for another—that’s not really a question a fashion brand can answer.