Body-positive influencer launches legal action against Boohoo

Mik Zazon was ‘heartbroken’ to see her trademarked slogan being ‘appropriated for profit’

Instagram influencer Mik Zazon has launched legal action against Boohoo for taking her trademarked slogan for use on a billboard ad (Mik Zazon/@mikzazon)

An Instagram influencer has accused Boohoo of taking her trademarked slogan for use on an advertising billboard and says she has launched legal action against the brand.

Mik Zazon, a health and fitness coach and body-positive influencer, posted two photographs on her Instagram account showing a photo of her body with the slogan “Normalise Normal Bodies” and another screenshot of a post by Boohoo showing a billboard with the same slogan.

The post by Boohoo, which no longer appears on their Instagram page, included a caption that said: “Taking over the biggest screen in Europe is cool, but using it to promote self-love is even cooler.”

Zazon said she was “heartbroken” by the billboard, adding: “@boohoo, this is my community. Not yours. My trademark. Not yours.

“On top of my attorneys taking legal action, I hope all bigger brands will see this and put the littlest amount of effort to research before taking something that isn’t yours.”

The Ohio-based influencer, who has more than 981,000 followers on Instagram, trademarked the slogan on 8 December 2020.

Zazon told Insider that she has been in contact with the brand via the social media platform and email.

A purported representative from Boohoo reportedly told Zazon that the company did not take the situation “lightly”, and said they would have loved to collaborate with her, but it was “unfortunate” they could not make it work.

Zazon said she thought Boohoo’s response was “awful” and that the slogan represented her “life’s work”.

She created the slogan, first used as a hashtag, in 2019 after leaving an outpatient eating disorder recovery programme.  She had also been struggling with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and lupus.

In a blog post about the origins of the slogan, Zazon wrote: “I had started my recovery when I realised I was living a life that was not safe or something I could maintain for the rest of my life. I tried to be thin, skinny and smaller because I was trying to fit into the mould of a ‘fitness Instagrammer’.

“Everything I believed in before entering eating disorder recovery was a scam. A lie. And I was angry… My body was normal all along. So I got my letter board out and formed the words, normalise normal bodies on it and I posted it on social media.”

The hashtag #NormaliseNormalBodies has since grown and has been used in 257,000 Instagram posts.

Zazon told Insider she was “not against spreading the message”, but was opposed to Boohoo’s “appropriation of the phrase for profit”.

“I will go in my grave before I let a fast fashion company take away from something that is so personal to me,” she added.

The Independent has contacted Boohoo for comment.