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Yet another sexually suggestive fashion advertisement has come under fire — this time the culprit is T.I.’s Akoo clothing line. There’s been an outcry in Newark, NJ over this billboard ad for his Akoo jeans which a number of residents feel is overtly sexual, demeaning and inappropriate. Pop the hood to read their argument and join the discussion.

“What’s the message here? ‘If I wear these clothes more women will want to have sex with me,’ ” said James Sawhill, a Rutgers-Newark marketing professor. Maybe, maybe not. The larger question, however, is: Why Newark? Would it be anywhere else? Millburn, Livingston, Bernardsville? City Council President Mildred Crump is fed up with her city being a doormat for degradation.

“I’m so sick of people seeing Newark as a place where they can do whatever they want,” she said. “They think they can put it in a black community and nobody is going to say or do anything.”

It’s one of many problems Newark Mayor Cory Booker believes have to be addressed as issues of basic decency. He says he’s got kids wearing their pants too low, and others using inappropriate language in public places.

“There’s a lot of fronts to this fight,” he said. “On this particular issue, I will work with my city council to see if we can address it.”

An executive at CBS Outdoor, the New York-based billboard company, didn’t think there was a problem with displaying the advertisement.

“It was a sexy, racy fashion ad, as they so often are,” said Jodi Senese, executive vice president of marketing. There are more-explicit ads CBS will not post, she said, but this one didn’t rise to that level. AKOO, whose clothing is distributed by Rp55 in Virginia Beach, Va., has not responded to requests for comment. The billboard raises another important question: Does demeaning women also sell? Sawhill says advertising is designed to impart information and conjure up emotion. It can be laughter, fear, concern. In this case, it’s something primal. Or you could come up with a good caption contest. However, the billboard contains no informational content. It’s strictly emotional, and Sawhill says ads like this are far too common in minority communities.

For that reason, it’s demeaning. There’s the sexual inference for starters, but it also appears to be targeting African-Americans.

Sawhill says nothing is wrong with marketing to a particular audience as long as it’s not insulting to the people you want to buy your product. And this one is clearly offensive.

“What does it say, that it’s all right for oral sex in public?” said Brian Woods, a Newark resident. “That’s not the message we want to send to our young people.”

We can definitely see how an ad with a young woman’s head buried in a man’s crotch, with both her hands tugging at his jeans while he presses his hand against the back of her head could push more than a few buttons. But hasn’t fashion advertising been pushing these kinds of buttons for decades? Is T.I. doing anything that Calvin Klein and Armani haven’t been doing for ages?

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