This article evaluates regulatory responses to stereotypical gender portrayals in advertising in the UK before and after the 2019 changes in the Advertising Standards Authority's (ASA) harm and offensiveness framework. It systematises for the first time the ASA's rulings in this territory and brings a new perspective in its modern practice by examining it within Deaux and Lewis' theoretical framework on the multicomponent structure of gender stereotypes. We argue that the ASA's new rule and guidelines represent a missed opportunity to take bolder steps against ads that objectify or inappropriately sexualise individuals and are not sufficiently attentive to the multi-faceted nature and fluidity of modern gender identities. We conclude by making recommendations for improving the effectiveness and implementation of the ASA's guidance on the depiction of gender stereotypes.

Indecent images and defamatory meaning in late modern societies: taking ordinary, reasonable readers outside their ivory tower

Weir's film The Truman Show tells the story of Truman Burbank, a man unaware of the fact that he has been the star of his own reality TV show since the day he was born. When a journalist asks Christof, the director of the show, how he has managed to keep this secret from Truman for so long, he replies: 'We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented. It's as simple as that.' Truman thinks he is an ordinary man living an ordinary life, but his entire world is a lie: the place where he lives is a television set with cameras hidden everywhere; everyone around him including his wife and friends are actors playing their roles. When he finally finds out the truth, he decides to break free from his comfortable mediated 'cage' and explore what lies beyond the world Christof and his team have built for him.

From reality to representation and back: the rise of 'socially aware' television From the news coverage of physical-world events like O.J. Simpson's or Oscar Pistorius' trials and their TV dramatisation to concerns over jurors relying heavily on scientific evidence due to an alleged 'CSI effect' (Mopas, 2007), the boundaries between social reality and its televised counterpart become increasingly fluid. Manning (1998) describes a televised world of 'media loops' whereby images are constantly recycled and reproduced in new contexts. Similarly, Ferrell (1999, p. 397) refers to a process through which images nowadays 'bounce endlessly one off the other' creating an 'infinite hall of [mediated] mirrors'. This process goes beyond Baudrillard's (2001) idea of an artificial hyper-reality where people escape from the 'desert of the real'. What Manning (1998) and Ferrell (1999) ultimately suggest is that contemporary reality (including the reality of crime, violence and criminal justice) is inextricably intertwined with its representation and it is therefore imperative that criminological research takes this relationship into consideration. As far as TV content is concerned, academic scholarship has mainly focused on the study of news discourse, whilst TV fiction has been regarded primarily as a site of pleasure and entertainment (Henderson, 2007). The escapist function served by television (Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) and the disproportionate emphasis often placed in fictional narratives on individual pathologies (instead of deeper social forces) for entertainment purposes (Best, 2008) should not be overlooked, but neither should the potential of such narratives to inform and even provide a kind of educating entertainment (the so-called 'edutainment') (Klein, 2011).

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