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You are > Home > Hysterical censorship is a storm in a B-cup
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Thursday, May 27, 2010
Hysterical censorship is a storm in a B-cup
BY TP O’MAHONY
I BLAME it all on Serena Williams.
If the busty tennis star had worn a different T-shirt at that press conference, there would have been no fuss about sexy or sexist advertisements, and no moaning among the politically correct brigade about a "pornified" culture.
In Wimbledon in 2009, after winning the singles title, the number one women’s tennis player in the world sauntered into a postmatch press conference wearing a white T-shirt on which the following was emblazoned in red letters: "Are You Looking At My Titles?"
In the midst of the controversy over the Hunky Dory rugby advertisements, no one spotted the link with Serena’s T-shirt. The most provocative of the two Hunky Dory advertisements showed a shapely lady in a low-cut top kneeling behind a rugby ball, asking the question: "Are You Staring At My Crisps?"
I spotted the advert on the side of a bus shelter and immediately said to myself that someone in an advertisement agency had cleverly adapted the Serene Williams T-shirt photograph, which had been widely used, especially by the tabloid newspapers at the time.
The advert also claimed that the makers of the crisps were "proud sponsors of Irish rugby". It wasn’t long, therefore, before the bigwigs of the Irish rugby make it clear that their noses were somewhat out of joint.
"We have no association with the advertising campaign as the product is not an official partner or sponsor of the IRFU or Irish rugby," said an IRFU spokesman.
"Any purported links to the IRFU, Irish rugby and the Ireland rugby team are totally incorrect."
Fair enough. But then there was a far more serious complaint made by the Rape Crisis Network Ireland, which claimed the posters were sending out messages that may condone or have the effect of encouraging unsafe actions.
"These posters add to attitudes and behaviour that make Ireland a place where the casual and everyday sexual assault of women is permitted and unchallenged," its director Fiona Neary said.
The National Women’s Council described as depressing the advertisement and the fact that the company would get "masses of publicity" from the controversy.
Of course if the Rape Crisis Network hadn’t made its ridiculous complaint in the first place, there would never have been a controversy anyway.
Talk about a storm in a B-cup! In any event, the company that makes the crisps, Largo Foods, capitulated. The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) said the company had accepted its request to pull the campaign because of widespread criticism. The process of removing posters and billboards followed. The whole episode was quite ridiculous.
If this kind of hysterical censorship spreads who knows where it might end – will we see Page 3 being ripped daily from a certain tabloid?
By the standards of what is now publicly available on our news-stands in this age of raunch culture, the Hunky Dory advertisements were way down the scale of what in some quarters might be regarded as offensive or sexist.
A much more provocative advertisement some years ago – the one featuring supermodel Eva Herzigova on the "Hello Boys" Wonderbra posters – ran for ages without a murmur of complaint.
To jump from a photograph of a buxom, skimpily clad female model bending over a rugby ball to the conclusion that this encourages sexual assault is a leap too far. And then some.
Of course we ought all to be concerned about the sexual mistreatment of women. But our concern must also be sensible and must not lead to silly forms of protest, especially protest masquerading as civic virtue. Censorship has done immense harm in Ireland.
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