In 2013 Kiko Mizuhara participated in a photo shoot for the cosmetics conglomerate SHISEIDO. The photos required that Kiko appear naked, something that isn’t uncommon in the modeling industry. Unfortunately, what happened behind the scenes was another story.

While the photoshoot was taking place, roughly 20 high ranking executives within SHISEIDO came to watch the photo shoot. Kiko stated that she didn’t want anyone unneeded to watch her, let alone 20 people, but her request was denied. She was told that all of the executives needed to be there so that they can properly see if the photos were up to standard.

Kiko went on to reveal that she completed the photo shoot against her will, she was told that this was her job and she could not refuse the conditions. She was “surrounded by men”, the executives, while the photo shoot was taking place.

In 2018 Kiko opened up about the story, but it only received minor press at the time, mainly from tabloids. When the story was shared to the notorious online community Girls Channel, a community where Kiko is extremely unpopular, comments went back and forth from defending Kiko, to bashing both SHISEIDO and Kiko. Despite that overall the majority was still against SHISEIDO.

“I wish SHISEIDO would leave the Country”

“Models are not ‘things’, Women are not sexual tools…well said“

“Shouldn’t there be minimal male staff, and more female staff? This is terrible“.

SHISEIDO did quietly respond to the story in 2018, simply saying that an internal investigation was launched. Upon completion of the investigation, they could not confirm if the incident described by Kiko actually took place or not.

Recently, the story gained a lot of traction thanks to Twitter user phie_hardison, talking about why she’s reluctant to purchase SHISEIDO products. Since the tweet was made on March 19th, 2020, it has received almost 90k likes.

(via jcast)