Raunchy adverts always cause some controversy, but it is a
sad state of affairs when innocuous ads have the same effect.
In April, Fox News went apoplectic over the J Crew advert
that featured the company’s president and creative director, Jenna Lyons, painting
the toenails of her son Beckett.
I am not sure whether the problem was that she was painting his
toenails or that they were painted pink — Beckett’s favourite colour — but for the conservative nuts, the advert’s
hidden agenda was to convert kids to being either gay or transgender.
Yep, that’s right. That little guy in the ad is going to
grow up “gender confused” because his mother subjected him to pink nail
varnish.
Fox News was not alone in its horror at such an “outrageous”
advert.
Media Research Center’s Erin Brown wrote in his opinion
page, “Not only is Beckett likely to change his favorite color as early as
tomorrow, Jenna’s indulgence (or encouragement) could make life hard for the
boy in the future. J Crew, known for its tasteful and modest clothing,
apparently does not mind exploiting Beckett behind the façade of liberal,
transgendered identity politics. One has to wonder what young boys in pink nail
polish has to do with selling women’s clothing.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, the latest ad to be banned is one
of an androgynous male model on the cover of fashion magazine Dossier
Journal.
The United States mega bookstore Borders refuses to sell
the magazine because the 19-year-old model, Andrej Pejic, appears shirtless on the
cover, looking “too much like a woman.”
Dossier’s co-founder
and creative director, Skye Parrott, told The Huffington Post that “it’s not a coincidence that it’s only the
giant US chain stores that are asking us to do this… It’s only the American
copies that are being censored.”
I wonder how fab’s
covers would go down?
Why you can trust Xtra
