Is there a double standard in advertising, one for white people, the other for black people? That’s the impression of British singer FKA twigs, at the heart of an advertising controversy this week in the United Kingdom.
The controversy arose on Wednesday when the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority withdrew a Calvin Klein advert after receiving two complaints against it. The advertising, the agency rules, presents its model – the singer FKA twigs – as a “stereotyped sexual object”, and the consumer’s eye is drawn to her body, and not to the clothes.
On Instagram, FKA Twigs – whose father is Jamaican – said she did not see this label of “stereotypical sex object” with which she is given, but rather “a beautiful, strong woman of color, whose incredible body has overcome more more pain than you can imagine,” probably in reference to surgery she had for tumors in her uterus. “In light of other past and current campaigns of this nature, I can’t help but think that there are double standards here,” she adds.
Calvin Klein’s advertising offensive also features actor Jeremy Allen White, star of the series The Bear, on Netflix. This week, images of the latter – also half-naked, needless to say – went viral, with internet users swooning over his defined abs.