The online fashion retailer Pretty Little Thing, whose target market is teenagers and young women, has been banned from showing an “irresponsible” YouTube advert that portrays women “as sexual objects”. The advertisement starts with a woman in black-vinyl chaps-style knickers looking over her shoulder seductively before showing other women, including one in a mesh bodysuit, in “overly sexualised” poses. Pretty Little Thing cannot show the advert again in its current form. Pretty Little Thing: its online ad featured ‘overly sexualised’ poses, according to the Advertising Standards AuthorityThe UK regulator also recently banned an email advert by Boohoo, Pretty Little Thing’s parent company, for using the phrase “Send nudes”, which one recipient complained “made light of a potentially harmful social trend”. Boohoo said after the advert was banned that it recognised its obligations to ensure its advertising was socially responsible.

Source: The Irish Times February 05, 2020 11:03 UTC