The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) this week took the unusual step in reversing a ruling which it had made, that a Calvin Klein campaign featuring FKA Twigs was sexually explicit and  presented her as “a stereotypical sexual object”.

The ASA had initially made the decision to ban the ad back in January after two complaints were made that claimed the imagery was “offensive and irresponsible, because they objectified women” and were “inappropriate for display in an untargeted medium”. The ASA has stood by its ruling in relation to the latter claim.

The original ad showed the singer-songwriter partially covering her body in a denim shirt, revealing just part of her breast and bottom alongside the caption “Calvins or nothing”.

The initial ruling had been met with backlash from the public as well as FKA Twigs, who criticized the decision on her Instagram page and accused the ASA of applying ‘double standards’ – a similar Calvin Klein advert featuring Jeremy Allen White was not subject to to a ban. The ASA said that it had not been presented with any complaints surrounding White’s ads that it could pursue, but concluded that the imagery would be “unlikely to break [its] rules”. It claimed that the race and identity of the women were “not relevant” to form its ruling, after it noted that it was further challenged on whether race played a part in decisions to ban the FKA Twigs poster but not a similar poster featuring Kendall Jenner. It decided to review that decision based on the “strength of public feeling” and “views expressed by FKA Twigs” herself. 

The Advertising Standards Authority is the UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all media, ensuring that advertisements are truthful and socially responsible. The ASA both acts on complaints and proactively checks the media to take action against misleading, harmful or offensive advertisements.5 If an advert is found to be in breach of the UK Advertising Code, it must be withdrawn or amended and the advertiser must not use the approach again.

In a statement it said;

“As part of our new five-year strategy, we’re going to review the thresholds for intervening against ads on grounds of offence and prioritise the most serious cases. We think it will always be important to act in the most serious cases of harm and offence but, where an issue is highly subjective and, more often than not, socially divisive, it may not warrant our intervention.”