January 10, 2024 - 6:30pm
Today the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) announced that it would be banning a Calvin Klein advertising campaign featuring singer FKA twigs. The agency said that the image was overly sexualised, offensive and irresponsible, objectified women, and centred on the model’s physical features rather than the clothing (is that not true of all adverts with models?) Similar complaints were also made about images featuring the supermodel Kendall Jenner but, somewhat bizarrely, the ASA dismissed these on the grounds Jenner was not portrayed as a “sexual object”.
The ASA’s decision is yet more proof that we live in an increasingly paradoxical world. On the one hand, we live in a world where two people — just two — can complain about an underwear advert featuring a semi-naked woman, and the ASA therefore rules that the poster (which is far from contentious or vulgar) is too risqué to run. The ASA said the advert was inappropriate for display in a place where anyone (read: children and teenagers) could see them. Yet we also live in a world where, at the touch of a button, we have access to a Pandora’s box of inappropriate content. Over half of 11-16 year-olds have seen online pornography, the majority accidentally, and yet we worry about the impact of young people seeing a bit of a model’s sideboob?
Indeed, there does seem to be an increasing disconnect between the stringency of our advertising laws (drink responsibly, gamble responsibly, eat responsibly) and the Wild West of the online content that we are exposed to everyday. The ASA, rightly, wants to protect its audiences from harmful messages; for example, in 2015 it banned Protein World’s infamous “Are you beach body ready?” advert because of complaints about body shaming and diet culture.
Yet the ASA can’t protect people from the much more pernicious harms of online media. One “beach body ready” advert is a drop in the ocean of “thinspo” content on TikTok and Instagram. Everyday women, men, boys and girls are bombarded with “What I eat in a day” videos; body transformation before and afters; influencers promoting meal-replacement drinks and extreme diets or exercise regimes. In August last year a vegan influencer even died of starvation after eating nothing but raw tropical fruit, a diet she advocated to her tens of thousands of followers; this is far more concerning than anything the ASA is looking at.
In its quest to protect audiences, the ASA also perpetuates a strange double standard here. Just this week Calvin Klein launched an ad campaign featuring actor Jeremy Allen White, creating quite the online sensation. In the stills for the campaign he poses in a far more provocative way than FKA twigs — in one picture he is literally removing his underwear — and yet there are no complaints about what all the close-ups of his muscles and abs might be doing for male body image (despite the fact that body dysmorphia is on the rise in teenage boys).
The ASA assumes that FKA twigs is somehow victimised and stereotyped, whereas Jeremy Allen White is empowered and inspiring. This is a dangerous assumption, but the more we try to censor some areas of society and ignore others, the more paradoxical our world becomes: both ever-more puritanical and pornographic.
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SubscribeToday the Advertising Standards Agency [sic] (ASA) announced that it would be banning a Calvin Klein advertising campaign featuring singer FKA twigs. The agency said that the image was overly sexualised, offensive and irresponsible, objectified women, and centred on the model’s physical features rather than the clothing (is that not true of all adverts with models?)
Okay, but why did they ban it? Was it making false claims? Because that’s the only reason I can think of for a governmental agency (which, apparently, the ASA is not, so where exactly do they get off banning things?) to ban an advertisement.
Christ, I really miss the good old days, back when people minded their own damn business. Maybe that’s what the new party destined to replace the Tories could be called: the Minding Our Own Damn Business Party.
Too late for that, old chap.
Social media, surveillance and the increase in public sector and third sector jobs which depend on everything being a social problem which requires intervention has put paid to old notions of privacy.
I’d vote for that.
“The ASA, rightly, wants to protect its audiences from harmful messages; for example, in 2015 it banned Protein World’s infamous “Are you beach body ready?” advert because of complaints about body shaming and diet culture.”
This is misleading. The advert was banned for potentially misleading health claims not because of body shaming complaints.
‘Are you Beach Body Ready’ is a harmful message? I think that being obese, or body- positive (i.e. fat positive) is the harmful thing; as is denying the reality of how things are – objectively (medically) or subjectively (culture, aesthetics). Fat is far from a positive thing; unless you are one of the few that find it aesthetically pleasing, or you are a seal.
Sure, one can and should admit that shame is not always productive, or conducive to change – whilst also acknowledging that it often is. We’ve gone so far in the direction of being more sensitive that we are now actively harming people by coddling them from the emotional weight & consequences of meeting their own responsibilities
“or you are a seal.”
Love it!
“The ASA’s decision is yet more proof that we live in an increasingly paradoxical world.”
This undoubtedly true. There’s a great stand up routine on YouTube in which the comic (can’t remember his name sorry) reads out the lyrics of the widely banned “Baby, it’s cold outside” alongside the lyrics of a currently popular and not at all banned rap song.
The idea that we urgently need protection from some slightly seedy 70 year old lyrics but the rampant misogyny which runs through much rap music is totally fine is of course laughable.
Incidentally I don’t think either should be banned. In my view we should set a very high bar for interfering with free speech.
Pop songs were much filthier in the 1920s, even in Britain (cf: Harry Roy)
Paradoxical, but unsurprising. There’s an enormous double standard in our society where ogling the opposite sex is concerned – not to mention talking about it to others in the crudest terms.
Hard to comment without side by side pictures. Let’s see this Jeremy bloke…
Well, one can’t deny he is handsome.
After much tiring research (which I had to undertake myself due to the sad lack of a picture to accompany this article) I conclude both of these individuals are very attractive from the neck down. ‘Butterface’ is the term, I think.
The problem with defining standards and policing lines-in-the-sand is that people want to debate or tweak the position of the line.
Those who argue strenuously for the protection of children from the madness of gender reassignment medicine seem to loose interest when measures are taken to protect children from excessive sexual imagery in adverts.
There is indeed mad wokeness in the ASA such as banning SUV car adverts because the luvvies employed at the ASA don’t like big dinosaur juice powered vehicles. There is an argument to be had on that subject, but arguing against child protection on the grounds they see far worse on the internet is an unwise battle-ground against wokeism.
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Not sure what’s wrong with the woman in this image. She’s less traumatizing than those models used in the Dove adverts.
I’d like to thank whoever took that picture. I worked for Richard Avedon in the late 60s and it brought to mind an incredible photo session with Rudolph Nureyev. Gorgeous. Not afraid to say.
I would also like to include Avedon’s iconic photo of Nastassja Kinski with the serpent from the early 80s to my earlier comment. This photo of FKA twigs is stylistically in keeping with Calvin Klein’s advertising campaigns since the 1970s. Why is widespread vulgarity acceptable but we aren’t allowed to love the exquisite?
We are truly through the looking glass at this point. The absurd is common, common sense is inconceivable, the perverse is sacred, the sacred is profane, black is white, up is down, bad is good, and round and round we go. It’s a mad world and we’re all a little bit mad just from living in it.