Lara Stone's Calvin Klein Jeans ad banned in Australia for being 'suggestive of violence and rape'

from the Daily Mail

A risqué Calvin Klein Jeans campaign, starring Lara Stone, has been banned in Australia after the country's Advertising Standards Bureau decided that it was 'suggestive of violence and rape'.

Controversial: A new Calvin Klein Jeans ad campaign, starring David Walliams' supermodel wife Lara Stone, has been banned in Australia for being 'suggestive of violence and rape'

The advertisement sparked a storm of complaints from sexual assault workers and women's groups after it was posted on billboards across the country. It shows her head is rested on the lap of one, while she is straddled by another.

A spokesman from the Advertising Standards Bureau said that the image was demeaning to both men and women.

'The Board considered that whilst the act depicted could be consensual, the overall impact and most likely impression is that the scene is suggestive of violence and rape,' he said.

'The Board considered that the image was demeaning to women by suggesting that she is a plaything of these men.

'It also demeans men by implying sexualised violence against women.'

Clinical psychologist Alison Grundy, who works with victims of sexual assault, said that the use of sexual violence as a marketing tool was 'a dangerous new low'.

'If we continue to subject future generations of young men to great barrages of aggressive, misogynist, over-sexualised and violent imagery in pornography, movies, computer games and advertising, we will continue to see the rates of sexual violence against women and children that continue unabated today,' she said.

The ad is available to be seen here. Please be forewarned it's highly suggestive and laced with overtones of violence (thus the outcry).