'Sexually suggestive' lingerie advert that only showed model's body banned for objectifying women

Watchdog said ad 'invited viewers to view the woman’s body as a sexual object'

The ad was for a Glasgow lingerie store (Silks)

An ad for a lingerie store has been banned by the advertising watchdog for objectifying women.

A complaint was made to the Advertising Standards Authority about an outdoor poster promoting lingerie firm Silks, which featured an image of a women in lingerie “leaning forward to emphasise her bust” accompanied by the text ‘Tease the Season’.

The poster, which was seen in December last year, showed only the woman’s body, and her head was not featured.

The ASA said: “The purpose of the ad was to advertise a collection of lingerie and therefore we considered it was reasonable to feature a woman in limited amounts of clothing. The ad did not show the model’s face, and focused only on her body which was posed leaning over in a way that emphasised her chest.”

The watchdog said it considered that the model’s pose and the image, combined with the text “Tease the season”, was sexually suggestive, and also found that “by focusing entirely on the model’s body without showing her head, and in the context of a sexually suggestive pose and byline, the image invited viewers to view the woman’s body as a sexual object”.

“For those reasons, we considered that the ad objectified women and we therefore considered that it was likely to cause serious or widespread offence,” the ASA said.

“The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Silks not to use ads that objectified women and that were therefore likely to cause serious or widespread offence.”

The ad has also been referred to the compliance team in charge of implementing the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing, known as the CAP Code.

Silks, a Glasgow-based business, did not respond to its enquiries, and the regulator said that it was “concerned by Silk’s lack of response and apparent disregard for the (advertising) code”.