I was eating breakfast with a magazine spread before me. This time, it was the new slick that the Wall Street Journal bundles with its paper. I’m looking at this story, somehow involving a woman and an exercise bike. I forget anything beyond that.
“What is she doing?” my three-year-old asks.
“She’s riding an exercise bike,” I reply.
“I think she’s in bed,” he says.
“Uh huh,” I respond in that recognition that he’s being imaginative and contrarian as three-year-olds are when they’re not sleeping and sometimes when they’re eating.
Then I glanced at the left hand page.
(UPDATE: John wants a NSFW label on this post. I initially didn’t put one on it because it was SFWSJ. However, in hope of getting more traffic, here it is: Potentially NSFW. That made you click the Read More link even faster, didn’t it?)
“I guess you’re right, she is in bed,” I say.
“What is she doing?” the boy asks.
“She’s sleeping on high quality bedding,” I say.
“She doesn’t have any clothes on,” the boy says. “She’s in the air.”
“She shouldn’t be bouncing on the bed like that,” I impart the important lesson and turn the page.
You might want to put a NSFW label on this post.
Oh, all right, I will. I didn’t put one on it initially, although I considered it, because it was apparently SFWSJ (Safe for the Wall Street Journal).
It’s definitely at the edge of what you’d expect. I wonder if they got a bunch of calls about it. But that just makes the people who made the ad and the people who approved the ad feel even more Edgy.
Thanks!
Questions: let’s say that the same image was a painting, rather than a photograph. Perhaps in the style of Bouguereau or Manet.
Would that have made a difference in its acceptability? Should it make a difference?
Hey, I have no problem with the ad personally. I wish more products would use tasteful nudes. Not that I would buy them, mind you; I was looking for a handmade high-quality bed anyway, and I was convinced when I saw the two nude women ads on Hastens.com (NSFW, pleats). This is something worth purchasing, no matter the cost!
Take note, other advertisers. Tasteful, fantastic nudes. Please put them in Birds and Blooms, The National Review, and eWeek, the magazines I read regularly.
Wait, scratch that. I read those magazines where my children are watching. Instead, please buy ads on this site, which no one but me (and sometimes John) sees.
Well, after the National Review‘s swimsuit issue fiasco, I doubt that they’ll start doing fully nude ads. At least, not those featuring NR writers. I hear that even the more well thought-out The Girls of College Republicans photobook project has been canceled. A pity.
Well, they have an annual cruise. One would hope for some swimsuit pics.
There needs to be one of those convex-mirror-type warnings: “Objects or individuals near the ceiling are less likely than they appear.”
It’s always somewhat saddening to confirm that the best way in the world to get comments and links is to show a nude woman.
But I’m not above it. I just have to think of new ways to make it excusable when my wife asks about it.