Stupid "Sexy" Phone Commercial Banned For Objectification of Women

Quick question: If you watched this commercial without having read the headline, would you know it’s about cell phones? Or would you assume that in the forty seconds it takes the ad to get to a cell phone that you were being sold a particularly sexy mirror, white shirt or iron?

Can’t tell? I don’t blame you. And neither can The United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority, which has banned the commercial in the UK. So while we can shake our heads at how dismal the commercial is online, it will luckily never reach your TV screens.

I get what the commercial is trying to do — sell a phone so slim that you can put it in your underwear and people wouldn’t even known until you’d grown a grapefruit sized tumor from all the radiation — but what the ad company calls provocative “tongue in cheek,” the rest of the world is calling “objectification of women” and “nothing to do with the product.” And then there’s the false advertising. You see, the phone isn’t even as slim as it’s advertised and certainly not the world’s slimmest. But all those pesky little details? Cosmo’s Tess Koman points out that all the boobs and sex and ironing (OK, I added the part about ironing because it made the least sense) is supposed to make you forget that what you’re paying for is nothing more than a cheap plastic case full of lies and gross, leering stares.

The company responsible for the ad (Kazam itself) released a statement saying that the commercial wouldn’t have aired on any shows which children might have watched, but that’s not really the point. The point is that the commercial is disingenuous and entirely without charm or thought. While the ad company could argue that it’s being targeted for the women slipping the phone out of their unmentionables (although, has that really sold you on a phone?) from where I’m sitting (the floor of my living room) it looks like it was clearly created for the male gaze. I’m guessing that if anyone is buying a Kazam Tornado off this commercial alone it’s someone interested in meeting the woman in the video and not the woman herself.

(Sorry, I just realized that she took the phone out of her shirt, not out of her bra, meaning that there was absolutely no reason for the first forty seconds at all! This commercial tricked me into making up a story for it to somehow justify its grossness!)