YOUR FAVOURITE MTV SHOWS ARE NOW AVAILABLE ON PARAMOUNT+

Urban Outfitters Removes Shampoo For "Suicidal Hair" From Their Shelves After A Huge Backlash

WHY.

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s edition of ‘Seriously, What Were You Thinking?!’

Get ready to do lots of eyerolling. A bottle of shampoo dedicated to “suicidal hair” has been removed from shelves in Urban Outfitters after people complained about the insensitive wording on the packaging.

Customer Sam Missingham snapped a pic of the bottle and shared it on her Twitter account, asking Urban Outfitters directly whether they reckoned it was a good thing to be selling a product with such a potentially harmful and upsetting name.

Wondering what that little image on the back of the bottle is? It’s a cartoon of some luscious hair throwing itself off a cliff. Y’know, cos of the whole totally hilarious ‘suicidal hair’ thing that they’re pushing.

Made by British beauty brand Anatomicals, the shampoo is called Peachy Head, which people reckon might be referencing notorious Sussex suicide spot, Beachy Head. Told you you’d roll your eyes a lot.

Unsurprisingly, people have reacted pretty badly to the crass analogy, and called out both Anatomicals and Urban Outfitters for stocking the product.

Sam told Buzzfeed News that she’s recently struggled with depression, and was concerned about the effect the wording could have on younger customers.

“As an adult, I am fully aware that the advertising and branding of beauty products relies on a level of manipulation,” she said. “Teenage girls don’t necessarily have the maturity and experience to filter out such messaging.

Urban Outfitters have vowedto immediately remove the shampoo:

Anatomicals co-founder Paul Marshall has promised that the company doesn’t “make light of suicide and, in particular, teen suicide”.

“We are a cool, young, fun, irreverent brand – look at all our other products, they all have cute, funny titles,” he told Buzzfeed.

Yeah, you might need to try that one again, Paul. Suicide has never been and never will be cute, irreverent or funny. Let’s hope this forces companies to think more about their choice of language in the future.

Latest News