Young women are largely responsible for complaints that have led to the UK-wide ban of pictures of a naked Sophie Dahl in billboard advertisements for the perfume Opium.
    Despite the widespread belief that older people are more offended by nudity than the young, women over 50 tended to laugh it off, according to Lord Rodgers ,who retired from his chairmanship of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) at the turn of this year, just after the ban was announced.
  Lord Rodgers contends that in his experience older women take these things in their stride while the younger ones are politically correct.
   The Opium ad,  which shows the 23-year-old model and actress naked and on her back with her legs apart, was banned by the ASA after more than 900 people  complained that it was offensive. 
   The poster has received more complaints than any other advertisement since 1995, when more than 1,000 people objected to a British Safety Council campaign showing the Pope wearing a hard hat to promote condoms.
     In fact, even more explicit photos of Dahl were taken during the photo shoot in the U.S. for the Opium ad, one of them apparently showing Dahl with a man's head between her legs. 
   However, following the row, it is unlikely that any of the other photographs will now appear on billboards or in any other advertising.
    When the ad first appeared in magazines, the ASA received just three complaints, and these were rejected.
    The complaints turned into a flood, however, when Dahl's body started to appear on giant billboards throughout the UK. 
   The ASA responded by recommending a ban to its council, which agreed, and the ads were then pulled.
     The ASA's renewed concern about the portrayal of women in advertising has been supported by new research commissioned by the agency showing that 95 percent of the public believes there should be stricter controls on billboard ads.
    However, the ASA says that it is not against sexually provocative images on billboard sites, particularly when they endorse appropriate products like perfume or lingerie. For example, it had no concerns about the recent Gucci Envy scent ad showing a woman provocatively embracing the naked chest of a man.
    But trying to guess the public's sense of decency is a fine line and the Authority did recently ban a Gossard underwear campaign that ran with the catchline "Find your G spot."
   It also reprimanded Talk Radio for a poster showing a woman's naked bottom stamped with a bar code.
    Conversely, though, the Authority chose not to ban a Bol.com online ad showing a man and woman naked in bed together, despite a number of complaints that it was a gratuitous image to sell books.
     The ASA does not respond just to images.
    Sexual innuendo can also rile the Authority, as the raunchy Club 18-30 holiday company found out when it was knuckle-rapped for its "Beaver Espana" campaign last year.     
    Despite the ruling against the Opium campaign, the ASA has refuted accusations that it is oversensitive about female nudity. 
   Its new director general, Christopher Graham, is clear about where the Authority stands on the main points and was recently reported to comment: "We're not a fuddy-duddy organization wanting to ban nipples."

-Simon Bond covers European media for Media Life, writing from outside of London.

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