Virgin marketing stupidly used some photos of a teenage girl from Flickr without getting model releases first and is now being sued. But, that aside, the interesting bit in this story is that her family is suing for libel because the ad—with the tagline “Free text virgin to virgin”—damaged their daughter’s reputation.

Her 27 year old brother said, “It’s the tag line; it’s derogatory. A lot of her church friends saw it.” A lot of her church friends are ridiculing a teenage girl for being a virgin? It’s derogatory? They’re suing for defamation of character? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Comments

1. Laura on 2007-09-21 08:36:32 wrote: “taking crazy pills” - you & me both ! The logic in that lawsuit is so seriously flawed ! I can see the photog & subject suing, based on mis-use of the image. But “damage her reputation” by calling her a virgin in front of her church friends ? What kinda church is this ? Sheesh !

2. mc on 2007-09-21 09:24:05 wrote: i thought the exact same thing when i read about this. i figured i must’ve missed something in the ad.. the crazy pills reference is a nice touch ;)

3. s’mee on 2007-09-21 09:52:29 wrote: LOL You know, I tried to come up with a joke-response to this and, frankly, they all came out WAAAAY to bad for publication! There is no way you can defend a church group or sibling for being pro-anti-virgin… I need to go take those crazy pills, I have a headache just thinking about this!

4. are you my rik? on 2007-09-21 12:00:35 wrote: this was the first thing to cross my mind when i read this this morning…weird reaction. unless they’re actually upset by the main text, “dump your pen friend,” implying she’s a loser and should be dumped, which i could understand. but the fact that he said that the tag line, specifically, was derogatory…i’m wondering where i can get a prescription for those crazy pills too.

5. Sylvia on 2007-09-21 14:02:34 wrote: Unless they (the Virgin phone people) infringed on copyright, I think the lawsuit is frivolous. But even if they have to pay something just to make it go away, the publicity they’ve gotten from it will more than make up for any settlement. Meanwhile the foolish virgin, who was so embarassed to be outed,(as what exactly we aren’t sure) has caused herself to be the most famous virgin (or not) in the world, for at least the next 15 minutes! I’m guessing that Flickr will benefit the most from the whole brouhaha. Is that how you spell ‘brouhaha’?

6. Nobody™ on 2007-09-24 14:05:52 wrote: What?!? That doesn’t make any freaking sense. They must not even know what a virgin is. Idiots.

7. The Little Lady on 2007-09-24 16:28:50 wrote: The article says the photo was under a Creative Commons attribution licence, so the photo was fair game. I think she told her parents it was under creative commons so they’re trying to get money from Virgin some other way.

8. raymenie on 2007-09-25 16:53:35 wrote: The article I read claimed the family were upset by the text “dump your pen friend” which they felt was a subtle insult to the girl’s race. But really I would have thought most teenagers would be pleased to see themselves in an ad campaign!!