Women can be sexy and naked in advertising in France without raising eyebrows. But portray them in pornographic poses and even the French cry halt.
Earlier this year a wave of advertisements using violent and pornographic images caused a storm.
The normally placid advertising industry watchdog, its mailbags laden with angry letters, stopped one campaign and demanded changes to another. A government minister demanded explanations from the advertising industry and ran an inquiry which concluded that the adverts degraded women.
The offending campaigns showed "images of chained bodies covered in dirt, represented in animal poses, bruised faces, allusions to rapes or domestic violence, sometimes with humur, sometimes without", said a report commissioned by junior women's rights minister Nicole Pery, published last month.
High street clothing label La City had to cover up a poster campaign that showed a nearly naked woman on all fours in a field of sheep, ostensibly coveting their wool for a sweater.
Upmarket shoemaker J.M. Weston had to change a press campaign that pictured a young woman clad in a skimpy leopard skin-patterned negligee, seated opposite a man. Only the base of his trouser leg, sock and Weston shoe is seen hovering over her naked thigh.
Weston's campaign -- which the company said was meant to show seduction, not domination -- was changed to portray the woman as a fully-clothed journalist doing an interview.
Several risque campaigns also ran for luxury goods, creating a trend dubbed "porno-chic."
Those adverts went unchecked because luxury brands do their advertising in-house rather than through agencies supervised by the industry watchdog, the Bureau de Verification de la Publicite (BVP).
Dior adverts had scantily dressed, bedraggled women looking bruised, hunted or beaten up, Versace staged lesbian scenes for the onlooker while Gucci's Opium perfume and Emmanuel Ungaro adverts showed women apparently masturbating.
French people say such adverts went a step too far. They overwhelmingly want to ban advertising that portrays sado-masochism, masturbation or suggests sex with animals, according to a poll by market researcher Ipsos.
Eighty percent favoured outlawing sado-masochistic scenes in advertising and 75 percent wanted to ban scenes of masturbation or that evoke bestiality, the poll said.
"Here we are not talking about nudity but degrading images ... When you get to these more marginal things, the French want to draw a line," said Stephane Zumsteeg, deputy director at Ipsos's opinion poll unit.
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