Why is it today that people have to be so strongly opinionated and seek a course of action anytime a company expands their boundaries? Calvin Klein recently published images of adult models and children wearing their brand of underwear. Now Calvin Klein is being accused of contributing to child pornography and using homosexual images to draw more youth into their market. The major problem here is that adults, parents mostly, believe Calvin Klein used images hinting at teenage sexuality to sell to the youth market. There thesis could not be more ridiculous.
It is obvious over the last couple years, advertisements and the media has taken enormous steps to producing more graphic images. If I were working for Calvin Klein and parents approached me about the issue, I would ask them how I am supposed to see a product if people can only see it through the plastic wrap. Parents do not complain about seeing adolescents in half nude images, but the thought of a child appalls them. Children seem to care more about what they look like or what brand they are wearing than adults do. Calvin Klein was only trying to show how cool or comfortable kids can feel when wearing their underwear. It is a little extreme to say they are contributing to child pornography. People realize now how easy it is so sue a company and read into any messages they can to try to shape the world as they see it in their mind. Seeing a few young boys wearing Calvin Klein underwear laughing does not make them appeal to homosexual men.
The point of this article is trying to attack the company for publishing images that may or may not push the envelope. I still do not see any other way for children to see the underwear. It really is a shame that it's come to this, but once in a while it would be nice to not see people complain over such small issues. It is true that their are sick people in the world with fetishes of this nature, but no one is harmed in the posting of these images.
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Calvin Klein is actually extremely well known to use homoerotic imagery and to specifically code some advertisements as appealing to a homosexual market. There has been a whole lot of research into this, and, just like people of different genders or races or social classes respond to specific images more favorably than others, specific sets of images appeal to homosexuals. So the claim of using homoerotic images is nothing new to Calvin Klein, nor is it something that most of us who are not attunded to those particular images pick up on or respond consciously to.
The reason the ads were so controversial is because they featured very young children in the underwear, jumping up and down on a sofa. The thinking the people who were upset used was that these children were not of an age where it would have been remotely possible for them to buy their own underpants. Thus, the ads had to be intended for an adult audience, and any adult who finds an ad featuring children in underwear appealling must be a pervert. Or so went the logic behind the outcry. But, can you think of the last time you saw an ad for children's underpants? Not diapers or training pants, but for actual underpants?
Good post.
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