06 March 2024 , 10:08
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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has changed its mind about a Calvin Klein poster featuring British musician FKA twigs.
They had previously said the poster made her look like a "stereotypical sexual object". The ASA had originally decided in January that the poster could cause serious harm or offence by making FKA twigs look like an object.
They said they were worried their reasons for banning the ad were wrong. The poster showed the artist wearing a denim shirt that was only half on, showing part of her bottom and one breast. The words on the poster said: "Calvins or nothing."
Two people complained to the ASA saying the pictures were too sexy, offensive and not responsible because they made women look like objects and were shown in the wrong places. After the decision, FKA twigs, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, disagreed with the complaints in a post on Instagram.
She thanked Calvin Klein for letting her "space to express myself exactly how I wanted to". Next to a picture of the poster, she wrote: "I do not see the 'stereotypical sexual object' that they have labelled me. I see a beautiful strong woman of colour whose incredible body has overcome more pain than you can imagine."
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Calvin Klein stood up for the ad, saying FKA twigs is a "confident and empowered woman" who worked with them on the picture and said yes to it before it was shown. The ASA changed its mind and said: "In our previous ruling we judged that, because the ad used nudity and centred on her physical features rather than the clothing she was wearing, it presented FKA twigs as a stereotypical sexual object."
They thought again and said: "After careful thought, 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, that she had not been objectified."
But they still said the picture was too sexy for places where anyone could see it, so that part of the ban stayed. The ASA also said: "The decision to revisit our original ruling took place in the context of the significant strength of public feeling, including views expressed by FKA twigs, in response to our findings, but was driven by our concern that our rationale for banning the ad was substantially flawed."
"We wanted to examine whether we had used inconsistent wording and if we had made the right judgment about objectification in the ad. Our republished ruling is final."
The ASA didn't stop two posters with model Kendall Jenner from the same campaign after people complained. They said the posters didn't make her look like a sexual object and the amount of skin shown was okay for an underwear ad.
Miles Lockwood, who works at the ASA, said they can't win in these situations. He said: "This is a clunking great big poster on the street in an untargeted medium. Children are seeing it alongside adults, and sometimes that gets missed."
Mr Lockwood said the decision to ban the ad was made by the ASA’s council of 12 members, “two-thirds who are not from an advertising background, and a range of genders, ages, backgrounds and ethnicities”.
in January he said: "Inevitably with this sort of judgment, they are subjective at the end of the day, and we have to make a decision. We are balancing the right of the advertiser's freedom of expression with protecting the public from offence and harm, and that's the process we go through every week."
FKA twigs and Calvin Klein were asked to comment.