A smiling young girl leans against a metal railing on a dark street dimly illuminated by neon lights. She is wearing a ruffled miniskirt and a sleeveless shirt, separated by a narrow strip of bare skin at her midriff. Her figure mirrors that of the slightly more adult version of herself painted crudely onto the billboard behind her: a young woman with a flowing mane of red hair, black bra and arms held together behind her back, who looks coyly at the viewer as she floats upon a pile of pink clouds. 

An image taken off a child pornography site? Guess again.

The photograph is one in a series of more than two dozen related images included in the new FOX KIDS catalogue, which is distributed in FOX stores and can be viewed on the FOX Web site, at www.fox.co.il.

The provocative nature of this and the other images in the company's new ad campaign, which unapologetically presents children as sexual objects to promote its clothes, has recently led a group of Israeli parents to boycott the company.

"We parents, who have children of different ages, have decided to declare a consumer protest against FOX and its cynical and crude exploitation of our children's innocence," reads their message, distributed over the Internet in the form of a chain letter and posted on different chat forums.

The Fox catalogue for adolescents and young adults is even more explicit: Designed as an underground travel guide to Mexico and starring models Yael Bar-Zohar and Yehuda Levi, it is replete with bare-breasted female models in sexually provocative poses and colonial fantasies about the male sexual domination of "local mermaids." Readers interested in tips about crossing the border illegally into the US, the best ways to get drunk quickly or the proper manner to bribe policemen when caught with drugs will also find lots of helpful hints.

According to FOX's spokesperson, the company "respects its customers and emphasizes that its catalogue reflects colorful and fashionable clothing and does not transmit any other message. We regret it if we have hurt certain people, and they are welcome to turn to the company for a personal response."

Fox makes no attempt to conceal its marketing and advertising strategies. On the contrary, it prides itself on its Web site for creating fashions that "express and even shape the positions and choices of young cosmopolitan people," and for offering them "an entire system of values and figures" that celebrate "limitless fun and sexuality and total freedom and gives clothing a new role – seduction."

The company has dedicated a special link to its advertising philosophy, which emphasizes the "youthful, insolent, daring, innovative and sometimes provocative" nature of its campaigns.

Although different social and political lobbies have repeatedly protested against similarly provocative advertising campaigns in recent years, the grassroots call for a boycott may reflect a new trend among consumers.

Such an awareness, however, seemed far removed from the busy FOX KIDS store in Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Center on a recent weekday. Young girls, teenagers and mothers milled around trying on new summer clothing.

"I didn't even notice them," admitted several customers when asked how they felt about the large advertisements decorating the store walls.

"It will be very difficult for me to give their clothes up," said Anat Meruk-Kapan, a costume designer and the mother of an eight-month-old daughter who shops often at FOX.

"Their clothing is cheap, beautiful, comfortable, and not at all provocative, but I do think their advertising campaigns are terrible. My conflict is between the immediate lure of the clothing and the long-term responsibility I have toward my daughter. I don't want her to be seeing these advertisements a couple of years from now, and I am determined to join the boycott."