One of the less risqué images from I Love Ugly's jewellery campaign.

An I Love Ugly ad campaign featuring a naked woman hit the headlines this week. Donna Mile-Mojab explains why the campaign is an insult to men.

The fashion and beauty industry have set their sights on men; but they have a problem.

Their target audience is not interested in their products much in the same way that women were not interested in smoking cigarettes in early 1920s.

“Torches of freedom” was an expression that was used by the advertising industry to entice women to smoke. The expression was carefully crafted to appeal to women’s inner desire for emancipation and to reverse their perception that smoking was not appropriate for women; the campaign worked.

Women started smoking to improve their self-image and became reliant on cigarettes for their emotional comfort. Today research shows that women find it more difficult to quit smoking than men.

When it comes to skincare and jewelry, men have the same perception of social inappropriateness that women had about smoking.

The challenge for the advertising and PR companies is to reverse this perception.

READ MORE:

* Fashion label I Love Ugly's 'sexist' ads won't change men's attitudes - expert

* Why I Love Ugly's ad campaign is sexist and very dull

* The ads that have set tongues wagging

The starting point, as always, is to appeal to the consumers’ inner desire.

The ring-adorned hands that are placed on a naked woman’s breasts, crotch, and bottom are our clues as, how the advertising agency behind the 'I Love Ugly' brand, identifies their male clients’ inner desire: to access women as sex objects.

An ugly, but perhaps not a surprising thought for a company that, after all, calls itself “I love ugly”.

What comes across clearly from the cold and still images of the ad campaign is the lack of intimacy, emotions and connectedness.

The naked woman is reduced to her sexuality; her head is cut off from the picture as though she is devoid of thoughts, personality and emotions.

The man’s connection to the woman is depicted only through a physical contact with her breast, bottom and crotch. The male model is reduced to his animalistic desires; his head, the command centre for his intelligence and personality, noticeably absent from all the imageries.

The lighting and, the black and white images, add to the creepiness of the photos. The images are clearly fashioned after the porn industry rather than the erotic arts.

The ugly commercial imperative of neoliberalism requires us, men and women, to become slave consumers. To achieve this goal, capitalism needs to define our notions of self-worth, desirability and sexuality.

Feminism has done much to awaken women to this reality but the relentless advertising assault from music, fashion and gaming industry seeks to blur the borders between the notions of liberty and sexual subjugation in order to keep women in a commercial trap.

The 'I Love Ugly' ad campaign insults their male customers, firstly, by assuming that their manhood might be threatened by some pieces of metal and, secondly, by trying to define manhood as no more than the ability to put hands on a young woman’s breast, bottom and crotch.

Because of this “ugly” ad campaign, any man that wears these rings might be seen as shallow and misogynistic.

As for the Acclaim Magazine’s opinion that: "… they played it safe and incorporated something all men love - the fine feminine form", I hate to point out the obvious, but they are plenty of men who don’t like the feminine form, no matter how fine.

Donna Miles-Mojab is a feminist British-born, Iranian-bred, New Zealand citizen interested in international politics and justice.