Awful “Alibi” Fragrance Ads Celebrate Cheating, Naked Headless Women

3:45 pm, February 27th | by Amy Tennery

The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa has determined that a set of billboard ads for a new fragrance line, Alibi, do not objectify women and are allowed to remain in public view.

That being said, I’m not sure what does constitute objectification in the eyes of the ASA — but, given the severity of its non-reject here, it’d probably involve a photo of a woman with a big arrow pointing to her and the word OBJECT.

Backtrack for a second: A Cape Town bar called Mavericks Revue Bar designed the “Alibi” fragrance “particularly for gentlemen upon leaving the club,” according to Times Live. Oh, and Mavericks Revue Bar is a strip club, by the way, in case the rose wasn’t totally off the bloom quite yet.

The ads, pictured here, show women in various stages of undress (in case you couldn’t figure that out), with lots of “alibis” written next to them (so many levels at play here). “We were out sailing” might be the most baffling alibi of all, unless non-monogamous aquatic sex acts are more common than I realized. (Not the least of ads’ problems being the one poor headless woman on the right, and the one in the middle who looks like she’s about to club someone to death. Sexily.)

ASA has fielded piles of complaints but deemed the ads to be not “harmful to children,” which is just the best kind of endorsement there is.

In his defense, Mavericks club owner Shane Harrison claimed the series of ads “was a stimulating campaign.” Gross.

TAGS: alibi | alibi asa | alibi fragrance ad | alibi mavericks

Anonymous

These are the classic “headless woman” which chops the humanity right off of their bodies. With “headless woman” comes “objectifying”, no two ways about it.
Guest

*Alibis
Jeanri-Tine

Dear Maselphie. Their heads aren’t ‘chopped off’ at all. It just appears like that from the way this bias reporter cropped and inserted it into the text.
Nicholas

Can’t see the problem myself… the women are beautiful , the shots are beautiful… I have a feeling everybody’s getting so worked up because the fragrances are being sold by a strip club… not because of how much of a model’s face is showing. First time I’ve seen people taking such offense over a perfume ad!
12voltman1

Sex sells!

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