Australian swimwear brand under fire for Black Friday ad ‘glamourising sunburns’

An Australian swimwear brand popularised by celebrities including Kourtney Kardashian and Hailey Bieber has come under fire for Black Friday advertising which features a model appearing to suffer from sunburn.

Loleia Swimwear is a Perth-based brand that has a cult following, with its bathing suits modelled on prints fashionable in the 80s and 90s.

Its Black Friday advertising has been posted across Facebook and Instagram, and depicts a topless model lying on her front with the Loleia logo and details of their Black Friday sale appearing to be “sunburnt” on her back. The swimwear brand did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Cancer Council of WA’s SunSmart manager Sally Blane said the use of the image was worrying.

“It’s really concerning to see images like that, particularly targeting young people who might see that image and not realise that it might be a generated image,” she said.

“We don’t want people to aspire to that kind of look – tanning causes damage to your skin, and it is skin cells in trauma.

“Portraying and promoting images like that in the media is really not on … we’re really disappointed to see that kind of depiction.”

The image comes as the Cancer Council of WA launches a targeted campaign at young West Australians working outdoors in the lead up to summer.

In 2022 in WA, 1712 people were diagnosed with melanoma, and 148 people died.

Statistics also show melanoma is one of the most common cancers in Australians aged between 15 and 29.

“We’re really trying to change the culture that Australia has around the fact that tanning is desirable because we know that it just leads to skin cancer,” Blane said.

“We’d really encourage brands and advertising agencies to consider how they’re depicting those behaviours in their materials – considering that it’s young people that they’re targeting, [it’s important] to think about how they can encourage them to do the right thing, particularly with swimwear brands.

“We want to see just some positive reinforcement of the messages that we’ve been talking about for generations.”

Sara Lavis runs Perth skincare clinic Skin Collective, and said advertising sunburn in any form was dangerous.

“It’s a real concern that an advertising campaign is glamourising sunburn or tanning by showing it in a pattern,” she said.

“Research has shown that it actually only takes one sunburn that blisters and causes a peel to actually double your melanoma likelihood or risk.”

Lavis said she consistently has to battle with messaging around tanning in her role advertising sun safety.

“I definitely think a year ago, there was a significant messaging around making it trendy or cool to create tans,” she said.

“We saw even people go as far as tattooing tan lines on their bodies, which is a real concern in a country that has the highest melanoma rates.

“I think we need to take responsibility and understand that our marketing campaigns genuinely do influence trends – it’s important that your messaging is about sun safety, and we can do that by creating beautiful, curated campaigns that still [have a] SunSmart message.

“We’re actually changing the health of a whole generation, and it’s really important for us to be those educators.”

Last year, another Australian brand fell foul of national advertising regulator Ad Standards for a TikTok video of a woman lying on a sun lounge and captioned: “When they say it’s time to get out of the sun now but your tan just started to look good.”

The authority found The Fox Tan breached section 2.6 of the Australian Association of National Advertisers code of ethics regarding health and safety.

“The panel noted that skin cancer affects a very large number of Australians over their lifetime and continues to lead to a high number of deaths every year,” the decision read.

“The panel considered that the audience for the advertisement is likely to be younger Australians interested in tanning and considered that the messaging in this advertisement was especially dangerous for this group of people.”

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