ASA Adjudication on Chrisfuckinjones.com

Ad

An ad in Skin Deep magazine for a tattoo artist featured a naked woman photographed from behind with her hand between her legs. The words "CHRISFUCKINJONES.COM" were tattooed on the woman. The text to the left of the image read "CUSTOM TATTOOING ... GET IT HOW YOU WANT IT! WWW.CHRISFUCKINJONES.COM".

Issue

Two complainants said that the image and the text used in the ad were offensive and degrading to women.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Chrisfuckinjones.com (Chris Jones) maintained that the ad was not degrading to women, and asserted that it empowered women to get a tattoo. He said the ad was placed in a magazine which featured images of naked people showing off their body art and was no more indecent than other ads in the magazine. He said the phrase "get it how you want it" referred to the custom tattooing he carried out, and was an accurate way to describe his work.

Skin Deep magazine said they had withdrawn the ad after receiving one complaint. They said they had also received a lot of positive feedback about the ad and underlined that the magazine generally had a lot of flesh on display.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted Chris Jones' and Skin Deep's comments that the magazine featured images of people displaying body art, and acknowledged that readers would expect to see a certain amount of nudity in that context. However, we considered that, although Skin Deep featured some nudity it was generally in the context of highlighting the body art itself. Because Chris Jones' ad showed a woman from behind with the text "get it how you want it" written across it, we considered that it was potentially degrading to women and concluded that it was likely to cause serious offence to some readers of the magazine.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 5.1 and 5.2 (Decency).

Action

We told Chris Jones not to repeat the ad.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)