Twitter and YouTube have been asked to remove a body spray ad that contains “rape jokes.”
The Twitter and YouTube has government requested that two controversial advertisements for a body spray business be removed from Twitter and YouTube due to their “derogatory” content. “The video is harmful to the representation of women in the interest of decency or morality,” the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said, requesting that all instances of the advertising be removed immediately from social media sites.
After the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) declared the advertising to be in “severe breach” of their code and against the public interest, the government took action.
After its content was detected by multiple social media users as “promoting rape,” the advertising watchdog “suspended” two new Layer’r Shot advertisements “waiting inquiry.” Many people on social media described the unsuitable commercials as “disrespectful to women.”
One of the contentious commercials depicts a young couple in their bedroom as four men, who appeared to know the man in the room, enter without knocking. They then ask the woman a vulgar question before taking the ‘Shot’ perfume off a table, implying they were talking about the spray the entire time.
The other commercial shows the same group of men standing behind a woman in a convenience shop. “There are four of us, but only one will receive a shot Twitter and YouTube,” the men were overheard saying. The scene then cuts to a visibly shocked woman looking to them as one of them reaches for a solitary bottle of ‘Shot’ perfume on a shelf.
Swati Maliwal, the head of the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), tweeted earlier in the day that the advertisements exhibited “toxic masculinity in its ugliest form.” She further stated that she has brought the situation to the attention of the Delhi Police and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Twitter and YouTube.
