Moot, a men’s underwear company in the UK, had its ads banned and a television appearance shelved.
As reported by The Guardian, the brand was supposed to feature in a segment on British breakfast show This Morning, broadcast by ITV.
The owners of Moot were told the segment would be aired at a later date, and then it simply never aired.
According to Jules Parker, who set up the brand, This Morning’s lawyers told them the segment “wouldn’t get past [broadcast watchdog] Ofcom.”
Parker told The Guardian that the appearance on the show “would have changed our lives quite dramatically.”
The brand said their ads had also been blocked from Facebook for violating community guidelines and removed by Instagram without a stated reason. As a small business, the censorship has had a significant impact.
Parker believes that there is a double standard in the advertising of men’s and women’s underwear.
A press person for Moot told The Guardian that the brand was now considering whether they could continue.
“With no platform to pay for the small ads, and no budget for big marketing, we are invisible.”
According to a statement to the publication by Facebook and Instagram, they do not allow ads with “adult content and include images focused on individual body parts”, but also said that some of Moot’s posts had been incorrectly removed.
Moot is not the only underwear brand to have found itself affected by Facebook bans.
Womanhood, a self-described ‘inclusive lingerie’ retailer, had their ads banned from Facebook in 2019 for “overly sexualised positioning”.
Tanya Robertson, who founded the platform, wrote that banning ads depicting real, unairbrushed women from a diverse race of backgrounds and body types “prevents us from changing the narrative around lingerie.”
“The idea that lingerie is solely sexual is outdated. The repercussions of this hit not only businesses, but also women and girls who believe their bodies should be hidden, shamed, or look a certain way – a certain way that is often not rejected by Facebook for being sexual or explicit.”
In 2020, period underwear brand ModiBodi had their ad ‘The New Way to Period’ banned by Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube in Australia for showing period blood. The decision to ban the ad caused a furore on social media as people objected to the labelling of period blood as inappropriate.
Despite the Australian ban, earlier this year the brand launched the same campaign in the UK.
Featured Image: mootlingerie.com
