Remember when Calvin Klein was accused of kiddie porn for running blue-jean ads with provocatively posed teen models? He stopped the ads. In an age of racy images, even Klein seemed to agree there are taboos.
So I'd like to ask a question of Bali, the lingerie company.Why are you running ads not of half-dressed teens but an undressed 5-year-old?
Or maybe she's 4, or perhaps 6. It's hard to tell. See for yourself - it's on page 12 of the March 9 People magazine.
It's an ad for women's underwear. It shows a naked 5-year-old girl running outdoors, back to camera.
The point, as Bali puts it, is that "Only nothing feels better."
Fine. But a naked 5-year-old?
I asked opinions of several colleagues, and women in particular weren't troubled by the ad.
Still, take that photo out of People and put it in a different kind of publication, and they'll arrest you. And should.
Perhaps the normal reaction is, "Aren't kids cute."
But the reason kiddie porn is banned is that too many people have a not-so-normal reaction to such photos.
What makes this disturbing, at least to me, is the model. It's not a 2-year-old, it's an older child with long, dark hair, white strappy sandals and no baby fat. It's creepy, is what it is.
I once spoke with an admitted child-molester. He said it's like an addiction. You have to stay away from those magazines, always working to keep your mind off it. He said he understands others like him who volunteer to be surgically castrated.
I saw a similar interview on television with a counselor of a child molester. She has her client wear a thick rubberband on his arm, snapping it whenever he has objectionable thoughts.
I hope men like that aren't reading People this week.
I called Bali in Winston-Salem and they transferred me to Nancy Young, director of public relations. I told her I thought the ad was not just close to the line but over it.
"I had the same concern at first," she said.
You don't often hear such honesty from corporate spokespeople. Was she comfortable being quoted on that?
Yes, but she stressed her concern wasn't personal as much as whether others might find the ad objectionable. She mentioned that to Bali's marketing people before the ad had run.
"They agree they needed to be sensitive to this," she said.
So they did research, focus groups, that kind of thing. There were almost no objections.
They began running the ad last November.
Since then, Young said, they've heard from only two people who found the photo of the girl in bad taste.
But she conceded it had run in women's magazines only, like Redbook and InStyle. As a lingerie maker, that's their audience.
This week's ad in People was the first general-interest placement.
And Young allowed, "Men react differently than women to the ad."
They did not do market research on that, but it's what she's heard anecdotally.
An hour after we talked, she called back to say she'd discussed this with Bali's marketing staff, and on reflection, some expressed concern about putting the ad in People.
"We realized," she said, "we need to be careful about where we place it."
That will soon be a moot point. The ad is due to run only through next month, from now on in women's magazines only, and then stop.
"One thing," she added; "I'm not sure how old the little girl is, but she's younger than she appears to be."
She meant the staff was aware the photo could look inappropriate if they didn't go for the baby look.
If that's true, why did they run it when it didn't come out that way?
Young also said the Bali ad is different from the Calvin Klein ads. Those, she said, were selling seductively dressed teen models to a teen audience. "Our advertising is aimed at women 18 to 54. The audience we sell to saw the ad for exactly what we wanted it to be."
I'm sure they did.
It's not that audience I worry about.