A website advertisement for a horse food supplement has been banned because its was likely to cause serious offence.
The Advertising Standards Authority upheld a claim that the supplement called ‘Slut Mix’ was offensive.
The advert on the website of equestrian products company LeMieux Ltd was brought toe the attention of ASA by a complainant, who believed it to be sexist and perpetuated negative stereotypes of women.
LeMieux Ltd said it was a third-party stockist of the advertised product which was named by its manufacturer. The company said it did not advertise the product beyond its listing on their website.
The manufacturer said that ‘slut’ was a term commonly used by horse trainers to refer to a problem filly. It said the product was exclusively for horses and it did not intend to cause offence to people.
The ASA noted that the advertised product was a nutritional supplement for horses and that consumers would understand that the users of the products were horses. However, the term ‘slut’ was a well-known negative stereotype of women and was commonly used to refer to women who had or were perceived to have many sexual partners, in a derogatory way that passed judgment on those behaviours.
The ASA added: “We considered that, even in the context of an ad for horse supplements, consumers were likely to consider the word ‘slut’ to be highly offensive, derogatory towards women and sexist. For those reasons, we concluded that the ad, which included an offensive gender stereotype, was likely to cause serious offence.
“The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told LeMieux Ltd to ensure that their future ads did not contain anything that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence, including the use of offensive gender stereotypes.”
The full ruling can be viewed by clicking here
