Assvertising

[Trigger warning.]

From the rape-is-sexay files comes a new ad campaign from Italian clothing designer Relish. In the first billboard, below, a man dressed up as a Rio de Janeiro cop chokes one woman while his friend, also dressed as a cop, shoves another woman against a car and puts his hand up her dress. In the second, the two officers are twisting a screaming woman's arms behind her back while the other woman looks on, helplessly, in distress.




I don't know about you, but neither of these ads exactly scream, "Buy gold lame espadrilles!" to me. More like, "Italian designers think sexual assault is hiLARious!"

To his credit, Rio mayor Eduardo Paes has strongly condemned the ads (another in the series shows the officers shoving a woman on the ground and pushing her face into the cobblestones), calling them "in bad taste." Less to his credit, Paes reason for condemnnig the ads was because they "compromise the image" of Rio police. Glorifying sexual assault: No problem! Making cops look bad: Unacceptable!

[Assvertising: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, Thirty-One, Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, Thirty-Seven, Thirty-Eight.]