AKOO's Suggestive Billboard Pulled in Newark

Calvin Klein might get a lot of flak for the oiled-up, half-naked models in his billboards, but AKOO clearly took it a step too far with its billboard in Newark: The company that owns the billboard is taking the ad down.

The billboard for AKOO -- which, incidentally, is rapper T.I.'s clothing line -- is pretty clearly suggestive of some naughty behavior (a woman sitting in front of a man ... holding onto his unbuttoned jeans ... ahem), and the reaction in Newark and the surrounding area since it went up has been pretty intense. Barry Carter for the Star-Ledger first wrote about the billboard on Sunday, calling it seemed like a specific blow to Newark, even quoting City Council President Mildred Crump as saying she was "sick of people seeing Newark as a place where they can just do whatever they want ... They think they can just put it in a black community and nobody is going to say or do anything."

Gothamist, on the other hand, pointed out that some of the billboards that have gone up in downtown Manhattan in recent months are probably just as bad (we must agree, the Calvin Klein ad they point out might actually be worse than this one).

But it seems that CBS Outdoor -- the company that owns the offensive billboard -- has decided to err on the side of caution and pull the ad down. While we feel that, it's true, the ad was at the very least offensive, we're more hoping this starts some kind of chain reaction to steer advertisers away from signs that are just so clearly degrading to women. It's rarely the nudity that gets us riled up, it's the idea that women somehow so often end up on the ground, pushed around, or otherwise demeaned.

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