Bizarre toothpaste ad featuring naked woman has been banned

A toothpaste advert that showed a naked figure lounging in a chair has been banned after receiving public complaints that it objectified women.

The ad for BOCA organic toothpaste appeared in The Times supplement magazine in July this year.

It features a woman who appeared to be naked leaning back in a chair, wearing a pair of heels and holding the branded toothpaste.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have banned the advert after receiving two complaints. The authority claimed that it was likely to cause “widespread offence”.

In response to the ASA, Croftscope Ltd, who own BOCA claimed that the woman in the advert was not naked.

Defending the ad, a spokesperson for the company said that it reflected the “sensual and organic nature of their product”.

They also said that there was a fine line between sexual objectification and the expression of sensuality.

In the ASA ruling, it claims that BOCA also stated their target audience was “predominantly female, with an aspirational lifestyle characterised by luxury and self-indulgence.”

The toothpaste company said that their product features night and day formulations and that the advert depicted a woman “relaxing before retiring”.

A spokesperson from Raconteur Media, the company which publishes The Times supplement said that they “did not believe that the image of the woman in the ad was overtly sexual as she was mostly obscured with only one leg visible”.

Despite the two companies denying that the video was sexual, the ASA ultimately ruled that the ad was “sexually provocative”.

In its assessment of the advert, the ASA wrote: “We noted BOCA’s comments that the model in the ad was not naked and acknowledged that the ad did not include explicit nudity. However, we considered that the way in which the model was depicted gave the impression that the model was fully nude.”

They said the woman in the advert who is lying back with her legs apart facing the window created a “voyeuristic feel” to the ad.

The ruling said: “Furthermore, because the model’s face was not shown, we considered that the visible parts of her torso, including her lower portion of her breasts, and the lower half of her body became the visual emphasis of the ad, which was likely to draw readers’ attention,” the ruling said.

“We also considered that the nudity and the pose of the model, and the provocative nature of the ad, bore no relevance to the product.”