If you happened to have travelled the London tube in recent months you would have been confronted by an outstanding example of Australian beauty. Wearing a teeny yellow bikini, against a yellow background, the head to knees image of Renee Somerfield asks, "Are you beach body ready?" Lined next to her is the Weight Loss Collection by Protein World.
You would have thought that the Aussie girl's fresh looks would brighten up the morning of Londoners in the cool early Spring. But not all of them. An angry campaign developed on social media protesting against the ad for its showing an "unhealthy" female body.
The case went to Britain's Advertising Standards Authority, which received 378 complaints on a range of issues including that she was a “very slim, toned” model. They called the headline controversial because it implied other body shapes were inferior, and called the image promoting a slimming product as "socially irresponsible".
The Authority dismissed the claims, though not totally approving the ad. But already the campaign had moved to the US and caused another grand protest when the poster displayed on Times Square. Once again there was an outcry and demands that it be pulled down.
The image brought back another photo that you will remember whatever your age, even though it appeared 53 years ago. Statuesque Swiss actress Ursula Andress stepping out of the Caribbean surf in a white bikini, in the first James Bond movie, Dr No. Way back then, the image helped make the movie such a huge success. Ursula became a world star and the poster went up on every schoolboy's bedroom wall.
Side by side the two shots could be identical. Yet one was praised, the new one is loathed - what has changed in the world?
Ursula was an icon of her age: the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Carnaby Street, Haight-Ashbury, free love and youth power. Today it's more yoga and vitamins, whole foods and organics. Metaphorically we have circled from the cavaliers to the puritans.
I'm afraid I can't see what is offensive about a beautiful girl on a billboard. Handsome young men in a poster don't leave me feeling upset or inadequate. I feel no urge to cover their pecs. I decided many years ago that I'd never make a candidate for the Chippendales, so there Is no void in my heart.
I enjoy the Dove "real women" campaigns, but not to the exclusion of ads that show aspirations for perfection. In the big world of advertising there is room for both.
Some of the American protest tweets get very aggressive. "Get your sharpies out. Deface the ads you see on the subway." says one blogger.
This is the thinking of the ISIS terrorists destroying Syrian monuments, or the Afghan Taliban blowing up the Buddhas at Bamiyan. Would the protesters take their hammers to the Venus de Milo or boxcutters to Botticelli's Birth of Venus?
Let's get real. Some people are born more beautiful than others, and are a joy to watch and admire. Enough of the bitch slaps!
Of course advertising always wins in the end. The controversy has raised months of media visibility and Protein World sales have soared around the world. In fact the company claimed that the UK controversy made them enough to pay for the US campaign. As PT Barnum has been credited: "There is no such thing as bad publicity."
