Women’s rights organizations yesterday accused a local dairy product manufacturer of misleading young girls by depicting “ample bosoms” as a prerequisite for prettiness in its recent green papaya yogurt television commercial.
The Taiwan Women’s Link (TWL) and the Taipei Association for the Promotion of Women’s Rights (TAPWR) made the accusations at a press conference in Taipei yesterday morning, during which they showed the 30-second television commercial featuring what appears to be a five-year-old girl asking an attractive, well-proportioned teenager to reveal her beauty secrets.
The TV commercial then shows a close-up of the young woman’s breasts before she takes out a cup of yogurt and tells the child: “As long as you eat one of these every day, you will grow up to be just as beautiful as I am.”
“In the past, we have seen too many car, computer and food commercials using women as a marketing tool, but at least their advertising models and target audiences are grown people,” TWL director-general Huang Shu-ying (黃淑英) told the press conference.
“However, it is apparent that the yogurt commercial primarily targets young children and seeks to instill the notion that large breasts are something every girl should aspire to. We strongly deplore the company’s advertising strategy, which pursues profit at the expense of children’s rights to develop a healthy sense of self-worth,” Huang said.
TAPWR standing director Chien Shu-pei (簡舒培) said the content of the commercial clearly violated the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法), which prohibits TV broadcast content containing information that impairs the physical and mental health of children and juveniles and carries a fine ranging from NT$100,000 to NT$1 million (US$3,300 to US$33,000).
“As the commercial also insinuates that its papaya-flavored yogurt has the effect of enhancing breast size, it constitutes a violation of Article 28 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法) that stipulates that the labeling, promotion or advertisements of foods should not be false, exaggerated or misleading,” Chien said.
Chien added that there was no evidence for green papaya’s rumored efficacy in breast augmentation.
The organizations issued three demands: that the dairy company stop airing the commercial immediately; that the National Communications Commission and the Ministry of Health and Welfare investigate and handle the matter in accordance with the law; and that the government make a concerted effort to crack down on TV programs and commercials containing content detrimental to children’s physical and psychological well-being.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods