Getty Images, the popular stock photography database, recently appealed to red-blooded soccer fans with a photo gallery on its homepage called “World Cup 2018: The Sexiest Fans.”
Basically, the image site rounded up a bunch of international beauties cheering on their favorite teams, patriotically brandishing flags and generally looking totally hot (see some of them in the gallery above).
It did not go over so well. The slideshow was quickly deemed sexist and inspired a not-unexpected round of Internet outrage.
C'mon, @GettyImages. It's not hard to have a few women in the room so they can tell you this is gross BEFORE you release it. #photography #sexism https://t.co/PewO3BWOU4
— Jamrock Marketing (@JamrockCo) June 26, 2018
Bravo, Getty images, on harming these fans (and all women) by projecting an idea that women have to be "sexy" to attract your attention. 👏
— Kateryna Gordiychuk (@KT_gordiychuk) June 26, 2018
apparently not even getty can resist the siren song of the traffic from photos of uncompensated beautiful women https://t.co/54mqtaoUxs
— Natalie Weiner (@natalieweiner) June 26, 2018
https://twitter.com/rey_z/status/1011561178013806592
One blogger at Jezebel wrote, “This is 2018, and dumb-dumb oversights like these are going to inspire outrage. What did ya think would happen, Getty? Come on, man. Have you even been online?”
Getty promptly took down the offending gallery and replaced it with an editor’s note apologizing for the photos.
Earlier, we published a piece, “World Cup 2018: The Sexiest Fans,” that did not meet our editorial standards. We regret the error and have removed the piece. There are many interesting stories to tell about the World Cup and we acknowledge this was not one of them.
Hmmmm…What do you think?