Thursday, September 03, 2009

British Censors Ban Youthful Looking Models

Really.

The UK advertising watchdog has banned a campaign by the retailer American Apparel for using a partially nude model, who appeared to be under 16, in a series of images that suggested she was "stripping off for an amateur-style photo shoot".

American Apparel's press campaign, which appeared in Vice magazine, featured a series of images of a young-looking girl in states of undress.

The Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint that it was offensive, unsuitable to appear in a magazine that could be seen by children and inappropriate because the model seemed "young and vulnerable and [the ad] could be seen to sexualise a child".


Actually, there is a lot of BS here on all sides. Here is the ad, which is made up of six photographs in total.





Where to begin...

For starters, the young woman looks young. Shocking! But let's get a grip here. She doesn't look 15. I'm around lots of 18-22 year old young women (funny how that happens on a college campus), and lots of them look younger than this model. I have a hard time going up to these women and telling them they look wrong or illegal. Frankly, anyone who looked at this ad and saw a newly pubescent girl has something seriously wrong with them. Fine, she isn't exactly Marilyn Monroe in terms of her figure, but that hardly makes this ad child porn.

As Sp!ked puts it:

Here, the ASA ruling is based on the watchdog second-guessing what people might think the ad shows, regardless of the facts of the matter. Because the 23-year-old girl, according to the ASA, could pass for 16 in parts of the ad, and because the ad could be interpreted to be sexually suggestive, it must be banned.

Of course, the fashion and advertising worlds have always conveyed images of glamour, beauty and desirability and there is often a discrepancy between appearances in advertising and the reality of everyday life. We all know that wearing a hoody might make us feel warm, but it won’t turn us into sex bombs, just as we know that doing the laundry is not a life-affirming experience, as many detergent ads seem to suggest, or that deodorants don’t turn women on.

What is apparent from the ruling on the American Apparel ad is that for some strangely oversensitive individuals and for the self-appointed moral custodians at the ASA, facts and reality do not matter, either. Instead, the spectre of paedophilia haunts their imaginations to such an extent that even a 23-year-old woman could be seen as a child in need of protection.

All true. But even admitting that, the response of American Apparel is almost as laughable, especially for its gutlessness.

American Apparel said the ad was meant to depict the 23-year-old model in a relaxed "home" environment and that the hoodie shown was "soft to the touch" and could be worn directly against the skin. The company added that the ad focused on the hoodie and did not portray the model as "a sex object or in a negative or derogatory light".

Oh, give me a break. Whatever is supposed to come across from this ad about the nature of the product being sold, the model herself was selected in part because of her sex appeal. Hell, it's a unisex garment, so they could have put my 270+ lb ass in the hoodie if they didn't want people to get a whiff of sex. Of course we are supposed to notice the model as sexually attractive. What ad that employs young good looking models doesn't count on getting people's attention that way?

It's the prudishness of it all, by the advertising gestapo AND by American Apparel's wimpy response that I find so disheartening. If we let our self-selected betters decide what we can and cannot see based upon nothing but their subjective perceptions of things, what are we allowed to decide for ourselves.

For example, let's say two 18 year-olds want to get married, but the young women looks 14. Should the state step in and stop the proceedings because the false perception would be of state sanctioned child sex? I'm sorry but law has to limit itself to factual content and cannot be bent to accommodate some people's perceptions only.

But, if we really want to go the other way, well, I'm available for any high priced photo shoots.

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