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British advertising regulators have reconsidered a controversial decision to ban a Calvin Klein ad featuring musician FKA Twigs on the basis that it presented her as “a stereotypical sexual object.”
The billboard in question featured the singer with a shirt draped across her body, revealing part of one breast and the side of her buttocks, along with the brand’s famous tagline “Calvins or nothing.”
The U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has reversed its original ruling, concluding the ads were unlikely to cause offense on the basis of objectification. However, it still decreed the imagery to be “overtly sexual,” and said the billboards should be banned so under 16s could not see them in an “untargeted medium.”
The partial about-turn comes amid a debate about the censorship and double standards placed on women and women’s issues in advertising.
FKA Twigs protested the original ban herself, pointing to “other campaigns past and current” of a similar nature that remained uncensored, likely encompassing the high-profile current men’s Calvin Klein underwear campaign fronted by U.S. actor Jeremy Allen White, which depict him in a pair of boxers against the New York skyline.
