Australia and the UK are flipping out over TV commercials for Elle Macpherson's lingerie line, Intimates.
The ad, called "knife fight", opens with a woman standing in Intimates underwear picking up and putting down knives in a kitchen. It then shows two women having a naked knife fight and ends with a woman cleaning blood off the kitchen floor. At no point in the ad can the women's faces be seen.
If you watch the ads you'll see that it's not quite a "naked knife fight," inasmuch as only one faceless woman is naked. The other is wearing a tattered, possibly bloody nightie. Wait, that's worse, isn't it?
The Sydney Morning Herald slammed the campaign, saying: "The ad just seems like a misogynist's sick fantasy, not the creative oeuvre of a fabulously lucky, successful Australian mother of two." ... Elle Macpherson... has said: "The imagery is beautifully haunting and ambiguous."
It's true, perhaps the women are merely preparing to sacrifice a goat, lying just off-screen in a pentagram.
Call me a prude, but I think Intimates should return to the innocence of its last campaign, about spying on women while they touch themselves.
[Related: A pictorial history of Intimates ad campaigns]
