Newly elected London Mayor Sadiq Khan has only been in office for a month and he’s already combatting a scourge of advertisements that “demean” women by promoting “unrealistic” body standards.
Khan vowed to take on body-shaming ads while campaigning for mayor, responding to the kerfuffle over Protein World’s infamous “beach body ready” ad last spring.
Protests in London included a “Take Back the Beach” rally; more than 70,000 signatures on a Change.org petition calling for the ads’; and hundreds of complaints to Britain’s advertising watchdog, ASA (Advertising Standards Authority), which launched an investigation into the campaign.
Despite the controversy, ASA later ruled that the provocative image—an aggressively fit model in a yellow bikini, along with text asking consumers whether they were “beach body ready”—was neither offensive nor irresponsible.
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