YSL Beauty has extended its Abuse is Not Love campaign with a new initiative Mistaken for Love to highlight the signs of intimate partner violence
L’Oréal brand, YSL Beauty, is dedicated to educating two million people around the world on intimate partner violence (IPV) by 2030. In its third iteration, the brand has worked with grassroots activists and content creators to highlight the nine signs of an abusive relationship.
This year’s Mistaken for Love tackles the misconceptions surrounding abusive relationships that are driven by popular culture and attitudes. It is built on the fact that many abusive behaviours are perceived as ‘normal’ due to representations of IPV in music, films and books.
As part of the campaign, the brand conducted research that goes a long way to prove that IPV and love are often conflated. Surveying over 10,000 people, the brand found that 46% of people have experienced behaviours that at the time they thought were love, but in the aftermath, they realised were abuse. What’s more, in the UK 19% of people in the UK have experienced the negative side of love bombing, rising to 22% of women.
Mistaken for Love is designed to tackle this through raising awareness of survivors’ stories through spoken word performances. Across the nine episodes, popular content creators and spoken word artists including Dan Whitlam, Zoe Love Smith and Widya Soraya explore frequent signs of abuse including intimidation, blackmailing and intimidation.
On the importance of his participation in the project, Dan Whitlam said: ‘Today more than ever, it is crucial to address the issue of abuse within relationships and breaking down the misconceptions that often have been masqueraded as passion or love. As a spoken-word artist and love-poet, it is a personal imperative to support the Abuse Is Not Love movement, and I’m genuinely grateful to be part of the ‘Mistaken For Love’ series.’
The Abuse Is Not Love programme has educated many since its inception, reaching more than 630,000 in over 25 markets globally via local grassroots non-profit organisations.
Juleah Love, Global Head of Brand Corporate Engagement, YSL Beauty, said, ‘We’ve created Mistaken For Love as a way to shed light on the subtleties of abuse, it can happen so easy and escalate quickly, and it can be very challenging to recognise if we don’t know what to look for. Our aim is to destigmatise talking about abuse and make getting help accessible for anyone who might need it. Abuse is not love, it should be as simple as that.’
You can watch all of the Mistaken for Love videos here, and find out more about Abuse is Not Love here.
