There’s one thing that sex can’t sell: Equality

IN 1985 a male model walked into a laundrette, stripped down to his underwear and put his clothes in a washing machine. Then he sat down and read his magazine as I Heard it Through the Grapevine played.

The 50-second scene was one of the most successful advertising campaigns of all time. On the back of it the old Marvin Gaye song roared back into the Top Ten and model Nick Kamen launched a pop career. Oh, and sales of Levi’s 501 jeans rocketed by 800 per cent.

I remember the advert well because I fell within the demographic of 15 to 19-year-olds which Levi’s was targeting at the time. Another reason I remember it is the next pair of jeans I bought were 501s.

What I struggle to remember is any disquiet from any quarters about the propriety of an advert in which a ripped bloke takes his clothes off as young women ‘customers’ giggle and ogle and objectify him. Had I thought about it myself I am sure I would have concluded they could objectify Nick Kamen all they want. He was a model. I am just guessing but I suspect objectification of models is an occupational hazard.

Another thing I don’t remember is wondering whether such an ad could have worked if the roles were reversed – if it were a female model stripping to her bra and panties in the laundrette as male customers leered on. But I think about it now and decide that, even in the unenlightened 1980s, those behind such an ill-advised campaign would have been branded sexist dinosaurs, probably misogynists too.

More than three decades have passed since most of us have thought about Nick Kamen but we think about gender issues all the time.

Lamentable

This week, for example, we marked the centenary of the suffrage act and, if we had any sense of justice, felt embarrassed for our society that an age when half the population was denied a vote because of their gender was so recent.

For months we have obsessed about the politics of sexual attraction and repulsion, tying ourselves in knots for the benefit of Harvey Weinstein’s actress victims to lay down ground rules for the expression of carnal instincts.

And for a similar period the BBC has been self-harming over its lamentable tendency to pay talented women presenters a fraction of what it was paying men.

Throughout all of this and for every year since Nick Kamen posters were selling and long before, the watchword has been equality. Why, then, do we still not understand what it means?

In the year 2018 a male model walks into a bathroom and starts taking off his clothes, unaware that he is being ogled through a false mirror by a group of lusty women. It is the latest advert from perfumer Paco Rabanne. It all gets too much for the gals when our hero sprays some of the stuff towards his groin. They faint.

Need we even consider what we might make of an advert depicting a beautiful woman stripping off as peeping toms spied on her? It would be an abomination. There would be riots. Social media would demand heads on spikes.

But the idea of women being the voyeurs is fine, says the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) – quite fun actually – and it’s clear that the male character’s attractiveness is portrayed in a light-hearted rather than a degrading way. Accordingly, the 120 complaints received about it were not upheld.

Scots confectioner Tunnock’s, on the other hand, crossed a line. It objectified women by trying to sell its products using a poster of a female tennis player holding a tea cake at the top of her thigh, where the tennis ball for second serves is often kept.

‘Where do you keep yours?’ asked the advert. And, beside a picture of the tea cake, it added: ‘Serve up a treat.’

The ASA noted the woman was depicted with ‘her bare thigh exposed and her underwear clearly visible’ (have they ever actually seen a ladies’ tennis match?) and particularly objected to the idea that the public was being invited to see the woman as ‘the treat’.

Which is beyond silly. The player in the picture is about to serve. The treat she is serving up is not a ball but a Tunnock’s tea cake. My guess is most people seeing the poster at a charity tennis match they were attending in Glasgow would have got it. Yet, having received just one complaint, the ASA concluded the ad ‘was likely to cause serious offence to some consumers and was socially irresponsible’.

But the thing which is really socially irresponsible is the moral cowardice behind rulings such as this which have everything to do with pleasing the politically correct and nothing to with genuine equality.

Innocent

Indeed, such bizarre decision-making exposes only the gulf of inequity between men and women in the use of glamour to shift product.

The truth is sex sells. From Marilyn to Madonna to Miley Cyrus it has never been in doubt. And from James Dean to Johnny Depp to Justin Timberlake the objectification of the attractive has passed through the decades as something we consumers of popular culture do.

Let us continue in our innocent enjoyment of other people who look great. And if the girl in the Tunnock’s poster has nice thighs, so be it.