UK Censorship: Vegan Soup Ad Banned Over ‘Objectifying’ Nude Model

Peter CaddleApril 7, 2022

An advert for vegan soup has been banned in the UK due to censorship authorities feeling it objectified a naked model.

Britain’s censorious Advertising Standards Authority has banned an advertisement for vegan soup over accusations that it objectified a naked model featured within it.

The advertisement — a still image — in question depicts a near-naked man with a soup bottle covering his genitals, with the tagline “#NOTHINGTOHIDE” seemingly referencing the soup’s ingredients, which the company seems to claim represents the soup brand’s “standards”.

While the company claims to have taken steps to “minimise” offence, the UK’s advertising authority — which has banned a host of adverts in the UK in the past for a plethora of often bizarre reasons — announced that they had banned the advert on Wednesday, labelling the soup selling image as “irresponsible” and “likely to cause serious offence”.

“Taking the image, the “#nothingtohide” strapline and the placement of the bottle into account, we considered that the ad was likely to have the effect of objectifying the man by using his physical features to draw attention to an unrelated product,” the advertising watchdog declared in a post explaining its ruling.

“We therefore concluded that the ad was irresponsible and likely to cause serious offence to some people,” the organisation concluded.

UK Bans ‘Harmful’ Gender Stereotypes in Advertisements https://t.co/MVnMxjcv8c

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 15, 2019

Britain’s advertising authority is well known for its liberal use of its censorship powers to ban advertisements, having previously gone so far as banning “idealised” depictions of women in 2016, and gender stereotyping in 2019.

Since then, the authority has repeatedly banned advertisements over accusations that they were “irresponsible” in their depiction of thin people, and for perpetuating “harmful gender stereotypes” by depicting a mother with a baby.

The ASA even went so far as banning an advert depicting a young woman over its use of the term “girl boss“, which it deemed “sexist” and “patronising”.

“We considered that using the gendered term ‘girl boss’, as opposed to just ‘boss’, implied that the gender of the person depicted was relevant to their performance in a managerial or entrepreneurial role,” the censorious watchdog wrote in its ruling.

“Furthermore… use of the word ‘girl’ to refer to an adult woman reinforced the impression that a female ‘boss’ was a novelty, playing at their role and somehow less serious than a man in the same position,” the ruling continued.

“…for the reasons given we concluded that the ad had the effect of reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes and that it breached the [Advertising] Code,” the authority concluded.

The ASA also noted that the company responsible for the advert had since had their advertising team undertake “training” to ensure they “considered wording… which could be misinterpreted or cause offence”.