The advertising watchdog has overturned its decision that a Calvin Klein poster depicted British musician FKA twigs as a “stereotypical sex object”.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had decided to review its original decision in January that the poster was likely to cause serious harm or offense by targeting FKA twigs “out of concern that our justification for banning the advert was substantially flawed” .
The poster showed the artist wearing a denim shirt drawn halfway up her body, leaving the side of her buttocks and half of one breast exposed, with text that read: “Calvins or nothing.”
The ASA received two complaints that the images were “overly sexualised”, offensive and irresponsible because they objectified women and were shown inappropriately.
Following the ruling, FKA twigs, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, disputed the complaints in an Instagram post and thanked Calvin Klein for giving her the “space to express myself exactly how I wanted.”
Along with a photo of the poster, she wrote: “I don't see the 'stereotypical sex object' that I've been labeled with.
“I see a beautiful, strong woman of color whose incredible body has overcome more pain than you can imagine.”
Calvin Klein also defended the ad, describing FKA twigs as a “confident and empowered woman” who had collaborated with the brand to produce the image and approved it before its publication.
Announcing that it had reviewed and changed its decision, the ASA said: “In our previous ruling we considered that, because the advertisement used nudity and focused on her physical features rather than the clothing she was wearing, it presented FKA twigs as a stereotypical sexual object. .
“After careful reflection, our council, the independent jury that decides whether UK ads break the rules, considers that the image was not sexually explicit, that the ad presented FKA twigs as confident and in control and therefore so much so that it had not been reified. .”
He added that, however, the council stood by its decision that the image was overtly sexual and therefore not suitable for display in a non-specific medium, meaning the ban was still in place at that point.
The ASA continued: “The decision to review our original ruling was made in the context of the significant strength of public sentiment, including the views expressed by FKA twigs, in response to our findings, but was driven by our concern that our justification for ban the The advertisement had substantial defects.
“We wanted to examine whether we had used inconsistent wording and whether we had made the right decision about objectification in the ad.
“Our republished ruling is final.”
(PENNSYLVANIA)
The ASA did not ban two posters from the same campaign featuring model Kendall Jenner after receiving complaints for the same reasons, believing that they did not focus on her body in a way that portrayed her as a sexual object and that the level of nudity did not go beyond that. that people would expect from a lingerie advertisement.
Following the original ruling, the ASA's director of complaints and investigations, Miles Lockwood, said the watchdog was “damned if we do, damned if we don't” in such situations, saying: “This is a big poster noisy on the street in an unmanaged environment. “Kids see it along with adults, and sometimes that gets overlooked.”
Lockwood said the decision to ban the ad was made by the ASA's 12-member council, “two-thirds of whom have no experience in advertising and a variety of genders, ages, backgrounds and ethnicities.”
