Watchdog mauls Disney woman's breasts

Watchdog mauls Disney woman's breasts

Mam-flash Adventureland ad banned

The Advertising Standards Authority has kicked into touch an online ad for Disney flick Adventureland, which encouraged Yahoo! users to whip off a woman's shirt with a click of the mouse.

The ASA explains:

An internet ad for the cinema release of the film Adventureland showed the torso of a woman wearing a white T-shirt with the word "Adventureland" written on it. On-screen text at the top of the screen stated "From the director of SUPERBAD. In Cinemas 11th September", while text at the bottom of the ad stated "Lift my shirt to see more. Click and drag up with your mouse". If users followed the on-screen instructions, the woman removed her T-shirt revealing that she was naked underneath.

In fact, a black rectangle covered the offending mams, but the animation attracted one complaint. It suggested that "the ad was offensive because it encouraged users to lift the woman's shirt in a voyeuristic manner" and "the ad was inappropriately located on the Yahoo! news page where it could easily be seen by children".

Disney defended that it "believed that the ad was not offensive and that the image of the woman lifting her top should be viewed in the context of the film trailer and the medium in which it was made available to the public", adding that "ads featuring womens' breasts were fairly common".

The ad was, the studio continued, for a 15-rated film and "designed with the target audience of 16- to 34-year-old men in mind, and that its placement and exposure was planned accordingly on the Yahoo! webpage".

Yahoo! noted that its news page boasted a 95 per cent readership of people aged 18 or over, and therefore, with "such a high adult audience, it was unlikely that many children would have seen the ad".

The ASA, though, ruled the ad offside on two breaches of the CAP code: clause 5.1 (Decency) on the grounds that "because users were encouraged to take action to remove the woman's top in order to see her breasts, the ad was likely to cause serious offence to some users"; and clause 2.2 (Social responsibility) since "the site was of general interest and likely to appeal to a broad range of internet users and that the ad was not protected through age verification or targeting".

It accordingly ruled that the advert "should not appear again in its current form". �