Ew.

I haven't said this since high school, but "barf me a river."

Tell me about it. Who wears a white belt?

Oh, fuck you Details.

I take personal offense at that picture. Almost everything in the photo is leather; is black leather; and much of it consists of belts with buckles visible. She has a watch strapped to her upper arm, and one shoe is strategically placed over both her hand and foot to look like she is wearing "ballerina heels" and bondage mittens.

They are clearly appropriating a BDSM, and specifically leather culture, aesthetic for their own purposes.

They are not us, they don't have a right to rip us off.

And at the risk of stating the obvious, also disgracefully misogynist and objectifying.

I feel for the woman posing. How on earth could you hold that pose for this shoot?

[tries to get into pose]

Nope. Can't do it.

A pathetically bad attempt at a Helmut Newton ripoff image wise. And then "objects" of desire. Me thinks they need to be Fridayfied.

Really, I think they just ran out of creative juice. This is the most unthoughtful ad I've seen in a while. Its like they had a meeting trying to come up with some clever shoot and just ended saying, "Ah, screw it. bring in the naked model!"

The ad is cheap, dull, and really uncreative.

Wow!!! Using a naked woman as a prop for advertising.. HOW ORIGINAL AND CLEVER!!!!!!!!!!

NOT.

Me, I'm wondering if they had to airbrush the accessories as much as the woman. Because that's some glossy-assed footwear.

Or in other words, ew.

Wow, we've now been degraded to furniture. Fantastic.

Our arms are supposed to be as tiny as wrists, great.

Walk all over me, I'll look sexy for you while you do it.

Hey y'all....PLEASE go to the website, and write them an email calling them out. Not like it will make a huge difference, and its great that we're aware of it right here, right now, but if we disapprove of misogyny like this, we need to get our voices out!

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Beautiful women are often considered status symbols for wealthy men, so it makes sense to display her along with the other accessories.

Yes, I would like to store my expensive leather stuff on a piece of furniture that oozes sweat and oil.

I really don't get the whole "Women as furniture" gimmick. They're obviously not after sane, empathetic (that picture makes my back hurt), or decent people, I guess.

Said a commenter at Sociological Images:

“It is not explicitly offending anyone, it doesn’t explicitly carry the message “women are sexual objects”. ”

No - it carries the message “women are objects.”

From an article I wrote on the dehumanization of women in advertising:

Social activist and media literacy proponent Jean Kilbourne, who with Diane E. Levin co-authored the newly released book, “So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids,” maintains that turning a human being into an object invites abuse.

“When women are constantly shown as objects, the abuse and the violence makes a chilling kind of sense,” she says.

In a presentation titled “The Naked Truth: Advertising’s Image of Women,” Kilbourne says the first step in committing a violent crime is to dehumanize the victim. She adds that many advertisements reinforce the idea that a woman’s body is an object.

Scott A. Lukas, chairman of anthropology and sociology at Lake Tahoe Community College and creator of GenderAds. com, a Web site that analyzes advertising images that relate to gender, also says sex slavery goes back to objectification and forms of dehumanization.”It’s hard to ignore it’s a big issue in our society,” he says. “It says, ‘This person is different from us, this person is less than us, so we can do what we want to them. There’s a movement toward something that leads to breaking down personal barriers that would normally prevent them from doing something wrong.”

"I really don't get the whole "Women as furniture" gimmick."

Maybe you have to be a male to appreciate it. The practice of eating sushi off a naked woman is still done in Japan and America (although it's now illegal in China) and although I'd never do that in public or for money, the idea of doing it one-on-one, like Samantha tried to do for her partner on Sex in the City, is very appealing. I can't articulate why, it just is.

I swear, I honestly saw that image and thought 'Oh wow, pretending to be a closet. A fetish I haven't heard of.' Kinda like http://elothtes.pbwiki.com/Furnies but real. I'm down with that, everyone can kink away as much as they like.

But no. More cliched sexist marketing. You see, as a guy it puts me in this position 'you want women to own and look at- this is the sign of your success'. But what if I DON'T want to own women, what if I don't want to hold them in a position when I look at them and they have to pose for me? What if I don't want to exert power over someone else? That's why all this stuff annoys me on a personal level.

I find this photo extremely disturbing too. The shoes were the first thing that I noticed, as Alessa said "Walk all over me, I'll look sexy for you while you do it." The other thing that got me was the bag placed directly near her genitals. Maybe I am the only one that thought this but I couldn't help but motice it looks like that pointy corner is lodged in, if you know what I mean. It made me think of when guys say things like "shove it" as an insult and that's what the photographer of this picture was screaming to her in my head. Uh! It is so sad that women are still being portrayed as nothing but objects.