“I may not be a virgin, but my future wife has to be,” is not the kind of statement you’d expect from a detergent company. And yet, leading disinfectant brand Dettol finds itself embroiled in a media scandal in China after releasing an ad featuring that very message.

The five-minute ad, released across multiple online platforms at the end of last month, features a man comparing his current girlfriend to his former, more sexually open partner. After learning that his ex-girlfriend had previously lived with another man, he thinks to himself, “Everything I enjoyed turned out to be secondhand service.” He then sets out to find a woman who is “clean and untouched by other men,” boasting to his friends that he will be his future partner’s first sexual partner.

Later, his girlfriend expresses her dissatisfaction. “It’s everyone’s right to choose to live with someone or not,” she says to a friend. “So who’s he to judge?” The story ends with her breaking up with him. As she throws her ex-boyfriend’s socks into a washing machine, along with Dettol laundry sanitizer, a voiceover says, “A toxic man is just like these germs — you need Dettol to eliminate them completely to feel at ease.”

By June 21, nearly a month after its release, the ad had been removed after drawing widespread criticism for objectifying women. 

On Monday, Dettol, which is owned by British consumer goods giant Reckitt, issued a statement via its official account on microblogging platform Weibo. It said the video had been produced by a third-party agency and was intended to “challenge unequal gender attitudes and promote healthy, confident views on relationships and lifestyles.”

The company said edited clips circulating online had distorted the advertisement’s original message. It also apologized for shortcomings in the content’s presentation and failures in the company’s review process.

As of Tuesday, the topic had attracted more than 80 million views on Weibo. Many criticized the advertisement as vulgar and questioned how it had passed each stage of production and review before being released.

Although some argued that the company had intended to create a contrast between the couple’s views before delivering a plot twist in the form of the breakup, many said that even after watching the video in full, they did not see it as empowering women but found it offensive instead.

“Dettol seems to be exploiting attention-grabbing themes to draw traffic, while trivializing women’s experiences and turning women’s ‘awakening’ into entertainment,” one highly upvoted Weibo comment read.

Lin Feiran, a lawyer at Beijing King & Capital Law Firm, told domestic media that the advertisement may breach China’s Advertising Law, which prohibits content that violates accepted social values or discriminates on the basis of gender. The company could face a fine of up to 1 million yuan ($150,000) and potentially have its business license revoked, he added. 

Lin also said the advertisement may violate the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests, which explicitly prohibits degrading or damaging women’s dignity through mass media or other means.

In recent years, Dettol has issued similar ads in which women are judged and belittled by their male partners after living together, including for a clothing disinfectant. 

Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: VCG)