Nude advertising (photos)

Advertisers have a long history of using nudes, or implied nudes in advertising, and we have explored this before here at Nude Is Normal. . And .There is a TV commercial running on UK TV, it’s promoting Life Insurance, and features a couple who are naked in front of their adult children. All the usual cliches. strategically placed objects to hide the nudity, embarrassed onlookers and so on.

Semi-Nude Women In Late 19th & Early 20th Century Advertising

How do you feel? Would you be offended to see the images in this post as you walked through Macy’s? Or down Rodeo Drive? Can nude advertising be creative and inhibiting, or is or always inappropriate?

I find AA’s advertising trashy and vulgar, but that doesn’t mean nudity can’t be done tastefully. I saw much of this in Sweden and France. Sweden even has laws to protect women so that, for example, a bikini-glad girl can’t be used to sell a car, but a nude woman can be used to sell bath soap. It was interesting to see how advertisers worked around these laws while never quite stepping outside of them completely, and I for one appreciated it. Call it censorship if you want. I call it common sense and a lot of people don’t have enough of it!

Oh my, this is loaded. So without reading everyone else’s comments, here are some of my thoughts: There is a difference between nudity and sexuality, and there is also the concept of exploitative images and the objectification of (typically) women and girls. I personally am comfortable with nudity (including stuff like women being topless at the beach) and with advertising that includes nudity. Like the Nivea nude in the flower meadow. I also don’t mind racy images and those that evoke sex; I see the first couple images in this post fitting this category and I don’t mind them. I do, however, react very strongly to images that objectify women, and I see the third picture in this post as fitting that category. It doesn’t show a women as a person but as a dehumanized body ready for you know what. I find it icky and exploitative and objectifying and yes, extremely offensive.