JANET STREET-PORTER: Is this REALLY an offensive advert? Banning FKA twigs’ classy Calvin Klein ad – while salivating over a male actor posing in his pants – exposes the woke brigade’s pathetic double standards

A TV chef (man) shows his pants and everyone starts dribbling with desire. In a new ad, this rough and ready hunk gives us a come-on, flying undone to reveal a pair of pristine white pants as he provocatively sprawls out on a rooftop couch.

Jeremy Allen White – also known as Carmy in the hit series The Bear (Disney+) – has become an unlikely sex symbol overnight in Calvin Klein’s latest ad. A pretentious essay in the New Yorker gushed about the importance of this cultural “moment,” while millions of fans couldn’t get enough of it. YES CHEF got thousands of likes on X, and even the orange sofa under Mr White’s backside has become a popular home accessory.

But when a woman – beautiful, smart, unique in her beauty and poise – decided to appear in the same campaign, naked except for a shirt, the reaction was very different. She was called a ‘sexual object’ and BANNED for being offensive.

Yes, in 2024 the double standard still lives on.

FKA twigs is an artist known for her individuality and style. Nominated for the Mercury Prize, she composes her own songs, directs her videos and is constantly looking for exciting collaborations. In the world of modern music she is uncompromising and special. The idea that Twigs, of all people, would agree to be part of a campaign that “used” or exploited her sexuality is downright ridiculous.

Jeremy Allen White appears in his pants for a Calvin Klein ad campaign

Nevertheless, the image of twigs, taken by fashionable photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, has been deemed unacceptable by the UK Advertising Authority, after just THREE complaints: one relating to the magazine version and the other two relating to TV adverts. The ASA investigated the complaints and then concluded – with breathtaking gravitas – that the public should not be exposed to such shocking filth because the images ‘focus on the model’s body, rather than the clothing being advertised created’, and ‘by focusing on her physical body’. characteristics, it presents her as a stereotypical sexual object’.

All this would be laughable if it weren’t so terribly woke and wet, a true reflection of how Britain has become home to the hand-wringing, easily offended, shouty minority. A place where people are canceled, toilet doors are remodeled to be ‘inclusive’ and where pregnant women are not allowed to be called ‘women’.

Consider the history of Calvin Klein ad campaigns. The company didn’t become the go-to panties supplier to the masses by focusing on washability or elastic strength. From the beginning, Calvin Klein used sex, starting with 15-year-old Brooke Shields posing in her jeans in 1980, accompanied by the slogan “what comes between me and my Calvins?” Nothing.’ The people were furious and a campaign started.

For the first underwear ad in 1982, Bruce Weber photographed an Olympic pole vaulter (no pun intended) naked, except for pristine white CK boxers. In New York alone, Bloomingdales sold $65,000 in two weeks and the rest is history. Soon, Marky Mark Wahlberg, rapper and actor, posed while grabbing his crotch and sales had risen to $1 billion. Kate Moss was featured in an ad that stated that “the best protection against AIDS is to keep your Calvins on.”

Moss then starred nude in Klein’s Obsession perfume advertisements.

Calvin Klein has always used the very best photographers and beautiful models and athletes in campaigns. When top model Lara Stone played with Justin Bieber in 2015, she received death threats from his fans!

The latest campaign with White was a huge success, generating $12.7 million in media attention in the first 48 hours. It’s hard to understand why Britain should remember the FKA sprig ads, especially since they hold firmly to the CK tradition, a tradition that has always celebrated sex and youthful beauty.

Surely it is up to the audience to decide whether their brains will rot when exposed to the image of a half-naked woman. It’s not like Twigs makes money flogging naked images of themselves in porn poses on OnlyFans.

The British singer-songwriter, pictured in London last month, posted her thoughts to her 2.4 million Instagram followers on Wednesday evening

Her story is so interesting: Tahliah Debrett Barnett (her birth name) was born to a Spanish mother and a Jamaican father and grew up in Cheltenham. She won a scholarship and studied at a private school, where she took opera and ballet lessons, before moving to South London. There she studied visual arts. Twigs has always been an extremely uncompromising performer and artist. She first worked as a dancer for other artists before starting to release her own music in 2012. Her album Magdalene was released in 2019 and received critical acclaim. Boyfriends included Robert Pattinson, Matty Healy from The 1975 and actor Shia LaBeouf. She has accused LaBoeuf of sexual battery and assault, and the case will go to trial in the US in 2024. Since the allegations came to light, he has publicly apologized.

But an artist like Twigs is not defined by who she is dating, but by what she says and sings. In 2018, she revealed that a year earlier she had six fibroids removed from her uterus – tumors that caused immense pain for years and which she described as the size of “two apples, two kiwis and two strawberries, basically a fruit bowl.” . By courageously talking about her life-changing painful fibroids – the most common gynecological condition in women – she has done us a huge service.

Most women I know in their 30s and 40s who suffer from fibroids have to wait up to six months for an NHS appointment, enduring crippling pain and periods so heavy they can’t leave the house. Twigs spoke out, calling other patients “amazing warriors… who are not alone.”

This is a serious person, not a bimbo. In response to the Instagram ad ban this week, she said, “I see a beautiful, strong, woman of color whose body has overcome more pain than you can imagine.”

Jeremy Allen White, 32, has become an unlikely sex symbol overnight in Calvin Klein ad

Jeremy was seen pulling on a pair of jeans while wearing white briefs, giving a smoldering look to the camera

She was proud of her participation in the campaign and of her physicality, claiming that her heroes were strong women such as Josephine Baker, Grace Jones and Eartha Kitt, who embodied sensuality.

Calvin Klein has redefined underwear by splashing its name around our midriffs and using soft, sensual fabrics. Twigs symbolizes a modern woman who knows her own mind.

Unfortunately, the Advertising Standards Authority represents fogeydom at its worst: worrying about whether a flash of a leg and a strip of naked female flesh will be offensive while we wait for a bus. Have they never heard of the Kardashians? Or Madonna?

I give up.