As a post-graduate art historian, I’m used to studying the female form and being twenty-something with a Y chromosome; I have a keen eye for its detail. There is a time and a place for nudity, for titillation, and for appreciating its magnificence and its symmetry. Both art and architecture aspire to be as flowing, as inspired and as beautiful as the curves and proportions of Venus.
Ingres, Manet, Titian, Cabanel and Botticelli are the big five when it comes to famous artistic portrayals of the female nude (or ‘slutty hooker’ in Manet’s case). Their art works are timeless because beauty itself is timeless. It comes then as quite a shock to learn that Yves Saint Laurent’s advert for its new ‘Opium’ perfume is; as The Telegraph reports - the eighth most complained about advert of all time. Why so? I mean, sure, she’s unclothed but she’s nude, not naked. She is portrayed to not be aware of the viewer’s gaze which is the defining difference between the two: The knife-edge between risqué elegance and sheer pornography.
Sophie Dahl may not be everyone’s ‘odalisque of choice’ in the model stakes, but her figure is charming, slender and youthful – perfect for wide-angled billboards across the country. My only complaint is that she doesn’t do more modelling – if that’s what it takes for her to NOT appear as a ‘celebrity TV chef’. When she appeared on BBC2, she tarnished my respect for the Beeb. To quote the old sporting adage, she had “all the gear and no idea”.
With all this said, I wonder how many of the thousands who complained about Miss Dahl also complained about KFC’s horrific thirty seconds of public relations suicide – An advert showing office workers singing with their mouths full. That’s right; you know the thing your mother taught you never to do? They did it then shoved it in your face around tea-time. Less ‘finger-licking-good’ and more ‘fingers-down-throat vulgarity’. Thankfully, my respect for the British public has been restored by the fact that this horror show has now become the most complained about advert ever thanks to nearly half-a-million prim and proper gentlefolk. Manners are thus more important than morals – God Bless you Britain.
Hi Paul - we are definitely going to have some interesting debates in next Spring’s “Visualising the Body” module at Uni, as your vision is poles apart from mine! I certainly agree that Ms Dahl looks super hot and luscious in this advert – but if you are equating her self-absorbed, orgasmic pose and super airbrushed skin (very much in line with the prevalent porno-chic in much advertising today) with the nudes in Ingres, Titian et al – all of which portray women as idealised beauties who are sexually alluring and passively available to men within the prevailing patriarchal culture, then what strikes me is how little such accepted representations of women have really changed over numerous centuries. A fact which disappoints the hell out of me. I don't think holding the viewer's gaze (or not) differentiates a nude from being naked. Manet's slutty hooker does just that, but she is still considered a nude. Let theoretical battle commence!
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