Just last year, @Ad_Standards upheld complaints for @HoneyBirdette ads for Kukuro bondage apparel. Now, they give the green light to ads for the very same BDSM collection to be broadcast to an audience that includes children. How does that happen?
collectiveshout.org/honey_birdette…
Last year Ad Standards noted the image “displayed a significant amount of bare buttocks” and used the term "bondage lingerie”.
This year, they refuse to even identify it as bondage lingerie (even though both the advertiser and complainant do) and instead describe it as “a woman standing in strappy lingerie”.
Last year they said the style of lingerie combined with woman’s pose “was interpreted to imply that the model was available for sexual relations, and that this theme was objectifying and exploitative of the woman”.
This year, they say there is “no sexualised context to the image” and that children “would not view the advertisement as sexualised”.
Last year, they determined the ad employed sexual appeal in a manner which is exploitative of an individual, and that it did not treat sex, sexuality and nudity with sensitivity to the relevant audience, and upheld complaints.
This year, they determined the ad- a sexualised image of headless woman’s torso in BDSM gear displayed in shopping centres around the country- treated sex, sexuality and nudity with sensitivity to the relevant broad (all ages) audience and did not breach the code.
So how is it one BDSM image can be acknowledged as objectifying and exploitative of women, but images of a woman’s body in the same lingerie, only without a head, is not seen as objectifying and exploitative? Do @Ad_Standards understand what #objectification is?
How is it that one image can suggest the woman is available for sexual relations, but the other which depicts a headless woman, stripping her of her humanity and reducing her to object status, does not also convey sexual objectification/availability?
How is it that one of these bondage images is ruled as inappropriate for an audience that includes children, but the other will apparently be perceived by kids as “a woman standing in strappy lingerie”?
Ad Standards is a joke. Ad industry self-regulation serves to uphold the interests of advertisers, not the community, and definitely not women or children.
collectiveshout.org/reasons_why_ad…
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