Target Australia Features Adorable Boy With Down Syndrome in New Ad
By Elizabeth Denton. Photos: Courtesy of Target Australia.
We're all about making ad campaigns and the like more diverse, and that means being inclusive when it comes to skin color and body type, as well as physical abilities. And that goes for kids, too. When you start inclusivity young, they'll grow up seeing people that look like them in magazines and on TV and that's great for everyone. That's why Target Australia's latest ad campaign is going viral. It features 7-year-old Julius Panetta who just happens to have Down syndrome, reports the Daily Mail.
Panetta is modeling right alongside his mom, Catia Malaquias, in the catalogue. "Having both of us in the ad was so nice. When Julius was born I didn't see any other families like ours being represented," she told Daily Mail Australia. "One in five Aussies have a disability. So while commercial advertising is taking great pains to show different body types they're not incorporating people with disabilities as often as we might hope. When you're looking at diversity you can't overlook disability."
Her son isn't a new model, either. He's a seasoned pro at this point. He's also done catalogues for kids brand Eeni meeni miini moh. But this Target campaign has really caught everyone's eye. This is probably also because, somehow in 2017, it's still rare to see a little boy playing with dolls, which is so crazy since Barbies are not gender-specific toys.
In addition to modeling alongside her son, Malaquias started Starting with Julius, a non-profit that works to fight negative stereotypes surrounding people with disabilities, reports the Daily Mail. Let's hear it for the moms, right?
This story originally appeared on Allure.
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