Peeping at women’s bottoms: contrary to good taste and propriety?
Decathlon's commercial showed a young lad running to a swimming pool with a snorkel mask in his hand. He dons the mask and dives into the water to peep at the bottoms of women who are doing aqua-gymnastics. With the voice-over: "enjoy looking, enjoy breathing". At the end, the father walks out of a Decathlon store holding a snorkel mask, while the voice-over says: "Er, for adults too". Fairly innocent and charming, you might think. But the Dutch Advertising Code Authority (RCC) didn't think so. The commercial allegedly made it seem as if this type of conduct was normal and acceptable. But it was contrary to good taste and propriety, according to the RCC.
Humour is something personal and, of course, not everyone would laugh at the commercial. Also, the RCC is circumspect when determining this type of case, as good taste is subjective. So what went wrong on this occasion? The commercial was an undisguised encouragement to buy this snorkel and then leer lingeringly and without being noticed at women's bottoms from below water level, said the RCC, which went on to stress that this is why it crossed the line, even if it had been meant in humour. Sneaky peeks at bottoms, including for adults, is an unseemly reason for pushing the sale of your product.Well, maybe this is going too far, maybe not.
Bottoms are doing well in advertising media. For instance, there was a decision by the RCC recently about a bus shelter poster for Radio 538, showing a lady with “huge, wet, bare buttocks”. This time, the RCC came down on the advertiser's side. Why? The image is not too explicitly sexual and does not contain any erotically tinged references. Nor does it project any negative image about the woman's position. Here, too, we can quite understand that not everyone would appreciate how Radio 538 depicted that summer mood.But the boundaries of what is admissible were not crossed.There is a fine line to be drawn when it comes to good taste and propriety: the outcome is not always what you might imagine.
Tamilla Abdul-Aliyeva