This could be the most offensive baby ever

This 1991 ad sparked protests and was pulled from several magazines

In the early 90s, the United Colors of Benetton knew how to turn heads, and quickly became the “shock-to-sell” kings of advertising. In 1990, the clothing company used a photograph of a man dying of AIDS in one of their advertisements. Other ads featured a nun and priest kissing, a guerrilla fighter wielding a human bone, and two children, one black and one white, with the black child’s hair cut into devil horns. But none of those images rankled as much as the one that featured what should have been an unremarkable sight — a human baby.

Benetton unveiled the ad in 1991, intending it for magazines and billboards the world over. It featured a recently born baby, identified only as “Giusy,” smeared in blood with its umbilical cord still attached, against a white background with the Benetton logo proudly emblazoned in the corner. Benetton stated the ad was “intended as an anthem to life.” But more staid passersby didn’t see it that way. There were protests over the ad’s indecency in Palermo, Italy, where the town council forced the billboard’s removal. A store manager at a shopping mall in Florida told the Baltimore Sun, “People have asked me to define the overall meaning of the baby.” Cosmopolitan, Elle, and — oddly — Child magazines refused to run the ad. When 800 letters of complaint arrived at the British Advertising Standards Authority, Benetton caved and apologized, but told the Observer that they were surprised by the reaction (yeah, right).

“You have to jolt, shock, break through — or you’re dead,” Johns Hopkins University-based media expert Porter Crowe said of the ad. But why was this particular image so incendiary? While Benetton had clearly emerged as one of fashion industry’s most formidable provocateurs, this advertisement exposed more about viewers’ squeamishness around reproduction and the human body.

And the brand had achieved exactly what it set out to do. People couldn’t shut up about Benetton.

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