Singaporean authorities have shortened Vogue Singapore’s publishing permit and issued a “stern warning” to the fashion magazine for its content containing nudity and promoting “non-traditional families.”
Singapore has strict policies restricting LGBTQ content within the city-state’s publications, with lifestyle magazines being banned from promoting or glamorizing “alternative lifestyles.”
Nudity — including “depictions of semi-nude models with breasts and/or genitals covered by hands, materials and objects” — is also prohibited.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The Singaporean Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) on Friday said that it has issued the local edition of Vogue “a stern warning and shortened” its publishing permit.
“It had breached the Content Guidelines for Local Lifestyle Magazines on four occasions within the past two years, for nudity and content that promoted non-traditional families,” it said in a statement, without specifying which content broke the rules.
It added that Vogue’s one-year permit was “revoked” on Thursday.
“Vogue Singapore has re-applied and MCI has since issued [the magazine] a six-month permit,” the ministry said.
A permit is required to publish and distribute magazines in Singapore.
The last time a publishing permit was shortened was in 2014, when a local arts magazine breached guidelines for “religiously insensitive/denigrative content,” the ministry told Agence France-Presse by e-mail.
Women’s magazine Cleo and men’s magazine FHM were also penalized for content on “sex, nudity and the promotion of promiscuity and permissive lifestyle” in 2008 and 1998 respectively.
The Singaporean government’s rebuke on Vogue came after the magazine had in the past few month published articles on LGBTQ topics, features on body positivity with photographs of semi-nude women and interviews with prominent Singaporean rights advocates.
Launched two years ago with a Web site and a monthly print magazine, Vogue Singapore has a print circulation of 25,000, publisher Conde Nast says.
On Vogue Singapore’s Web site, it states an aim to produce “thought-provoking content to drive change for good.”
The magazine did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government in August announced a plan to decriminalize gay sex, but Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) also vowed to “safeguard the institution of marriage,” defined as between a man and a woman — sparking concerns from rights advocates of additional barriers to full marriage equality.
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