Cara Delevingne's bare bottom made it past the United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority. But it couldn't make it past a few people with very low shock thresholds.
The U.K. watchdog has deemed the advertisement for Tom Ford's Black Orchid fragrance too racy to be less than 100 meters (roughly 328 feet) away from any schools. The sensual campaign features a nude Delevingne shown from the side, partly submerged in water but with the crack of her bum and part of one breast fully visible.
However, the ASA, which has cracked down on ads for everything from being too sexual to being too airbrushed (and yet there are still ads in Britain), did not find the Tom Ford campaign likely to "cause serious offense and did not degrade or objectify women."
But according to Harper's Bazaar U.K., people were complaining, calling the image "inappropriate" and "degrading," hence the restrictions. Sorry, kids.
The billboard that has critics more bothered than hot will remain at the corner of Brick Lane and Hanbury Street in East London because it is indeed at least 100 meters away from the nearest school.
Tom Ford Beauty has defended the ad as "sensuous, not sexual," and the billboard's was purposefully placed in a "hip urban neighbourhood in which commercial advertising of a similar artistic aesthetic was common."
And there Cara's butt will remain till the next envelope-pushing ad takes its place.
An example of what the ASA has found degrading to women in the past? In 2013 a television commercial for Dreamscape Networks starring Pamela Anderson that featured a male businessman daydreaming during a meeting about a scantily clad Anderson and another model prancing around was ruled "likely to cause serious offense to some viewers on the basis that it was sexist and degrading to women." The spot was thereby taken off the air.