Friday, March 16, 2012

Classic Benetton ad is still freaking out the squares


This infamous Benetton ad from 1989, by Creative director, copywriter, art director and photographer Oliviero Toscani, is still stirring up shit. A prominent Facebook breastfeeding advocacy page reports,

"Clearly Facebook doesn't like this image. This iconic, 23-year-old ad from UNITED COLORS OF BENETTON has been pulled down from countless accounts now, and [two users] have both been banned from Facebook for posting it, [one] for 24 hours, and [the other] for 3 days. It has been removed from this page several times."
A similar page has also been blocked for it.

Back in the '80s, Benetton was attempting to blow people's minds with its rather blunt attempts to show "interracial" love, understanding and equality. I wonder if people reporting on this image were more offended by the nipple itself, or that it showed a black woman nursing a white baby?

Nonetheless, Facebook remains a bastion of American breast anxiety.

See more classic Benetton ads here.

1 comment:

  1. first off, that's facebook. who cares what facebook says or blocks?

    2ndly, was there ever an ad showing a white woman breast feeding a black baby?

    I-)

    ReplyDelete