Calvin Klein, Brandon
In an unusually controversial Calvin Klein campaign made to look like child pornography, youth are asked revealing questions by an unseen man from behind the camera.
The male interviewer says, "You've got pretty blue eyes. Where did you get them from? What's your name? Where are you from?" Brandon answers that he's from Kentucky. The man says that the shorts fit Brandon real well.
While the other ads in the campaign included women, a number of boys were also asked by the man to remove clothing, perform and answer probing questions as well. Some of the young men are uncomfortable while others appear to be street-savvy. While research shows that pedophilia is more often perpetrated by men who identify as heterosexual, this ad appears to support the myth that gay men seek to molest young boys -- especially if a viewer doesn't see the interviews with young women.
Of course, fashion advertising is usually about sex, but Klein has many times created media storms over his ads. This campaign may have taken the title since President Clinton even derided the effort -- when he had his own better moral standing. Klein not only relented in response, he even issued a statement of apology.
Amazingly, the Justice Department was convinced to conduct an investigation to see if the models were "under age." This is ludicrous, since there is no age limit to being a model or actor -- the age investigation implied that the ads were actually pornographic.
Nonetheless, such advertising efforts are disingenuous, since their intent is to incite publicity, and are not unusual from fashion advertisers with small media budgets such as Klein, Diesel and Benetton.
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There was such self-righteous outrage over these "kiddie porn" ads that they were banned, which is ridiculous for ads which had models who were all in their late teens and early 20s. I realize that to a 90 year-old woman, her 65 year-old son is still her "child," but we better be careful using the term "child" or "kiddie" in the public sphere--otherwise we'll be sending 60 year-old men to prison as "pedophiles" for having consensual sex with a 30 year-old man.
And by the way, "Brandon" from this ad looks more like a classic Michaelangelo or Donatello statue clad in a denim loincloth--even if he says he's from Kentucky.