Part of Levi's sexually suggestive campaign promoting its jeans

Those old-fashioned button-fly jeans made by Levi Strauss Co. are being promoted in a new, sexually suggestive ad campaign called "Unbutton Your Beast."

"Your worst guess on what the 'beast' is supposed to represent would likely be correct," wrote Marian Ward today on the website for Concerned Women for America, the nation's largest women's public policy organization.

"I had trouble wrapping my brain around the research and development meeting where this idea was pitched – and why no one said, 'You've got to be kidding!'" she wrote.

On the BrandWeek website, Elena Malykhina and Steve Miller called it, "bold, risqué and quirky" and said it already is raising eyebrows.

The promotion centers around the company's interactive website where a viewer can choose from several characters to pop out of an unbuttoning fly of a pair of Levi's. Then a message can be recorded, or chosen from a stock list, to accompany the visual image. The whole thing then is wrapped up and can be sent as an e-mail to friends.

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BrandWeek says, "Consumers can visit Unbuttonyour beast.com where they will be greeted by a large pair of jeans that asks them to create, customize and send their own 'beast.' Site visitors can choose from such creatures as 'Paul the Pincher,' 'Sock Nasty,' 'Honky Tonk Hank' and 'Saucy Sal," then add a pre-recorded message or record their own via phone technology that captures voices."

Janice Shaw Crouse, senior fellow for Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye Institute, calls the ads "absolutely crude and socially unacceptable."

"One has to wonder when these ads will reach the bottom of the gutter," Crouse said. "The advertising executives are continuing to push the envelope in terms of the amount of vulgarity they can use. They have no sense of responsibility for polluting the social environment in which our children are growing up, forming their values and shaping their attitudes. When cultural sensitivities are hardened, it is hard for purity and virtue to survive. Our young people deserve to discover the beauty of sexuality within marriage; instead they encounter crudity and vulgarity from the time they are in middle school. We are robbing our children of their innocence and these hard-hearted corporations should be held accountable."

Officials with the jeans company did not return a WND message requesting a comment but Lauren Harwell of the ad agency EVB said she hadn't heard any complaints.

"We didn't think it would make people angry, because what comes out of the pants is so silly," she told the Los Angeles Times.

Besides, officials said, the ads only are online, and there aren't plans for print or television projects.

Robert Cameron, EVB vice president, said it was "good clean fun."

"If you can ignore the obviously sexualized nature of it," said Ward. "How raunchy can it get?"

BrandWeek reported the new stunt is part of a global campaign for jeans that also has included "Live Unbuttoned" and "Unbuttoned" campaigns.

However, even the industry reporting site noted, "Not everyone gets the joke. Since the site's launch … bloggers have been posting reactions that call the marketing push 'tasteless' and 'indecent.'"

"Levi's has been determined to … push the envelope in terms of its marketing," Dan Isett, of Parents Television Council, told BrandWeek. "I think you would be hard pressed to find a parent who would see this site … and consider [it] appropriate."

Another styles website described the campaign as "so shocking and tasteless, it's hard to believe."

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