Chloë Grace Moretz has responded to claims that the marketing campaign for her upcoming Snow White-inspired film is ‘fat-shaming’.

The 20-year-old actor voices the main character in Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs, an animated “sequel” to the Snow White story whose promotional posters and trailer have sparked a serious backlash.

A poster for the film, tweeted by model and body positivity advocate Tess Holliday on Tuesday, shows a tall, willowy Snow White with a heart-shaped face, oversized eyes and high-heeled red shoes. Standing next to her, with a confused expression on her round face, is a shorter, curvier version of the same character, holding the red shoes in her hand.

“What if Snow White was no longer beautiful and the 7 Dwarfs not so short?” asks the poster – suggesting, of course, that someone is automatically “no longer beautiful” if they’re not statuesque and slender.

Read more: #TheySaid: Women of Twitter recall the first time they were body-shamed

Holliday, who launched the #effyourbeautystandards campaign on social media, tagged Moretz in a tweet in which she expressed her distaste for the poster.

Moretz was quick to issue a statement on Twitter in which she said she was disappointed with how Red Shoes was being marketed – and insisted that the film actually offers a positive message to young women.

“I have now fully reviewed the marketing for Red Shoes,” she wrote. “I am just as appalled and angry as everyone else, this wasn’t approved by me or my team.”

Read more: 25 life-giving photos of little girls dressed as Wonder Woman

Moretz said that she had “let the producers of the film know” that she was unhappy with its promotional campaign.

“I lent my voice to a beautiful script that I hope you will all see in its entirety,” she continued. “The actual story is powerful for young women and resonated with me.

“I am sorry for the offense that was beyond my creative control.”

Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs is produced by South Korean animation studio Locus, with a script in English. According to the Locus website, the film – which currently has no release date – tells the story of “a Princess who doesn’t fit into the celebrity world of Princesses – or their dress size.”

Moretz plays Snow White/Red Shoes, who decides to leave her home on Fairy Tale Island (which is “all about looks”) to find her lost father. Along the way, “she learns not only to accept herself, but to celebrate who she is, inside and out”.

However, that message doesn’t quite comes across in the film’s trailer, which shows two dwarfs – who are actually cursed princes – sneaking into Snow White’s cottage and secretly watching her undress. (Yep.) They are horrified once they realise that Moretz’s character is only lithe and beautiful while she’s wearing her magic red shoes. As soon as she slips them off at the end of the day, her true self is revealed: a heavier girl who burps.

“They sexualise her and then f***ing body shame her,” wrote one Twitter user. “What a great f***ing children’s movie.”

Image: Rex Features