Yoghurt and naked females

Getting ready to go to work in the morning with Sunrise on in the background I was surprised, nay shocked, to see an image on the screen for a yoghurt advertisement.

Sometimes subtle suggestion is more powerful than a blatant image. Mae West, for instance, is still regarded as one of the sexiest women who ever lived, yet her philosophy was not to appear nude but to allow imagination to do the work.

The yoghurt image that I am referring to is for Jalna Yoghurt, the advertising slogan being “A little pot of purity”. This is the image:

(Click on this and the pic below to enlarge).

So what is so shocking?

Compare it with Manet’s well known work Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (“The Lunch on the Grass”):

Painted in 1862, the work created controversy when first exhibited in showing a female nude juxtaposed casually lunching in a park with fully clothed men. It is all the more confronting in that the nude female stares directly out of the painting at the viewer. The painting remains controversial to the present day.

It is ironic that the yoghurt is advertised with the words “A little pot of purity” when Manet’s painting was considered to be anything but pure when it was first exhibited.