Jodie Marsh: Fashion retailer Asos donates £10,000 to anti-bullying campaign after likening model to a man on Twitter
The glamour star turned body builder was "disgusted" by the company's response to one customer's question about male models
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Your support makes all the difference.Online fashion retailer Asos has apologised to Jodie Marsh with a £10,000 donation to an anti-bulling charity after they likened her to a man on Twitter.
The glamour model was left seething and "shaking with anger" when she spotted that the company had used a picture of her in her body building phase to post a response to a customer’s question about why they didn’t use male models with a more "manly" physique.
"Will this do?" they tweeted back, attaching the offending image of Marsh.
"This has reduced me to tears," she told The Sun. "I have been consoling my aunt following the death of my uncle and this is just not something I needed to deal with right now when my family is going through a difficult bereavement.
"It's totally unacceptable for such a big fashion company to ridicule the way a woman looks - what kind of message does this send to their customers?"
She initially hit back at the brand on Twitter with a slew of outraged messages, retweeting notes of support from her followers and even tweeting back to Asos a photograph of her wearing one of their dresses.
"Do you think I look like a man????? I don't. I'm disgusted," she wrote.
After realising the mistake, Asos quickly tweeted an apology:
But that didn’t cut it for Marsh, who tweeted the following:
Later on, and after facing a backlash its own followers, the brand issued a second, more formal apology:
Today, Asos announced its decision to donate a substantial sum of money to the Diana Award, which aims to fund acceptance and tolerance education among young people:
The former glamour model, 35, started training as a body builder in 2009. She starred in two TV shows hosted on the DMAX network that chronicled her gruelling training regime in 2012, Jodie Marsh: Bodybuilder and Jodie Marsh: Brawn in the USA.
She also appeared on Channel 5’s Bullied: My Secret Past , in which she spoke of the effect being tormented at school continues to have on her adult life.
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