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A billboard showing a Playboy centerfold.
It’s no secret that Slovenian advertisements, including billboards, are racy (<– potentially NSFW) especially by American standards. The new Playboy Slovenia billboard, though, seems to have kicked things up a notch. Basically, it’s a centerfold picture that’s been plastered onto large billboards and put up all around the country. The one above, for example, is located fairly close to a kindergarten. I can’t even imagine what the American reaction to this would be, nor can I imagine something that would cause an equal level of outrage among Slovenes. Maybe if someone put up a billboard saying "Give the Bay of Piran to Croatia"? I don’t know. I still haven’t figured out where the Slovenian public’s threshold is.
The business-daily Finance recently conducted an online poll, asking readers "Do you think the nudity shown on the Playboy billboard is acceptable?" Not surprisingly, the majority (62%) said "Hell, yeah." Finance also published a larger, clearer picture of the billboard here, if you want to see it.
(Thanks Vlasta!)
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That’s exactly what I thought when I saw this billboard. In the US it’d have been burned and been bigger than thelast Superbowl.
I don’t care so much about American sensitivities ("Sex bad - Ultraviolence ok", to put it in orwellian Newspeak). What really struck me though is that the poor woman must feel cold in just her knickers and a cocktail amidst all this snow and cold (it says -11 on the left of this page)…:-)
It’s all part of the effect.
To put in the words of master Yoda: "Mmmmm, nudity, I like!" But this billboard is really tasteless: Not because of nudity, but because of lack of imagination. I mean we all know the contents of the Playboy magazine. No secrets there. So these billboards were a complete waste of money and advertising space. Besides - watching nude girls on a billboard is like licking an ice-cream through a thick glass :))
I’m glad you posted this, Michael. We’ve got one of these in Nova Gorica, too, and I was going to post it as one in the ongoing series of racy billboards, but didn’t, on the grounds cited by pengovsky above: "lack of imagination" (in the advertisers, not you, FSM forbid). But your posting this led directly to my learning that my site has been flagged as pornographic by censor-ware (due to the billboard you linked to, one assumes). I hate to think what smutty classification you’ve got…
Hey, a perfect day for this post. Happy women’s day to all the women in the world. Btw. I was brushing up my memory trying to explain to a Belgian why we celebrate 8th March. I remember it was celebrated mostly in ex-communist countries. Can someone help me with that?
Sorry folks found the answer here. Michael and Carniola have all the answers.
And there is more on 8th March here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day
sgazzetti, Carniola surprisingly continues to be unhindered by Content Keeper, despite its being a wonderful source of porn… Hehehe
Is there anywhere I can find out if this site is being blocked by something, or blacklisted, etc… ? I’d love to know.Also, my posting this on Women’s Day was purely unintentional. Really.
It’s not what people think about the ad and the nudity, it’s more of what competition thinks.Remember Simobil Ad? with two hands grabbing a pair of breasts? There actually was no nudity on it, but few hints here and there from competition and the ad was quickly censored.Now they’re showing nipples. I don’t mind it (altho young lady there is nothing special), most of the people don’t, so the ad is staying.
Remember the infamous "sunmix" ad with a set of really sexy bottoms? When all the women’s-rights groups went haywire? Where are they now?Sex obviously sells. But this playboy ad is way off target, because ita) does disservice to Rebeka’s breasts (you can’t juts leave them hanging like that!)b) is unimaginative (I mean of course you want a playboy bunny to crawl in front of you - we’ve seen that pose time and again)c) is designed extremely poorly. I bought Playboy only once, and that was because I was bored as my then-gf was reading Cosmopolitan. But the ad in question does nothing to make me want to spend 1000 SIT on a pack of glossy paper full of boob-jobs and cars I will never have
I think Slovenes are only relaxed about sex in the media when the representation is cliched (most often a woman as a sexual object) and when it is vulgar and unimaginative. That’s why it is o.k. to have posters like this one, but a book with a lesbian character has to be removed from school reading lists and parents are appalled if highschool seniors have to read Vitomil Zupan’s Menuet za kitaro, which includes descriptions of several sexual encounters.
The rationale seems to be: sex is dirty, so it should be dealt with in a vulgar way, on the street and in retarded TV shows. In Naša mala klinika, for example, doctors groping an anesthesized female patient is presented as lots of fun, and, apparently, it is also o.k. to say »pizda« and »kurac« on TV. Children are exposed to this, but god forbid they should discuss sex seriously, in a serious institution and see sexuality as a subject worthy of artistic treatment.
Just like censorship, the banalization and vulgarisation of sex is a sign of repression and unease.
Now that Borut reminded me, there was a Michelangelo’s David poster made in early ‘90 for some theatre piece in Mb. It wasn’t accepted so nicely as these girls, and few days later most of the posters in the centre of town had a critical spot painted over by someone… Actually there is one such poster nowadays too, but it doesn’t show anything critical, today there is a price tag over the problematic area - 0.5 Euros or something.
Yeah I think t\hat the threshold would be a poster showing naked ladies and naked gentlemen holding up a big sign that says ‘Give the Bay of Piran to Croatia’
Can you imagine what the reaction would be in the US? Remember all the fuss a few years ago when Janet Jacksons breast appeared on Television for a fraction of a second. Nobody would of noticed had the media not made such an issue of it. Once the issue was made public, millions of people (including adolescent teenagers and curious kids) swarmed to the internet to download the now infamous moment. Ahh, the internet. If not for it I would never of been able to see this billboard, for I am trapped in the country where it is absurd to see a nipple, yet bombings and bloodshed on the daily news is totally acceptable.
Forgot to sign the last one
Michael, you’ve been living in US for too long. Tasteless or not, pair of brests will not hurt any kid I guess (most of them are brestfed anyway :-). Neither in Slovenia, neither in US. There are many other things kids (and people) should be prtected from, but they are not.Well it’s just my opinion.
In response to matej: I think you are a sexist pig. Breastfeeding children can hardly be compared to teaching them that it’s okay to objectify women. I am appalled that the only thing people here seem to find wrong with the ad is its lack of creativity. I have actually found Slovenes to be much more repressed about sexual discourse than Americans. How long before universities in slovenia have a lesbian and gay studies department? Slovenes are so close-minded toward anything sexual that is not completely mainstream.
To anon: At least I am a pig with a name.
Reading the upper comment, a sarchastic thought came to my mind: how long before political corectness succeeds in making even sex boring?
Oops, not not exately upper, of course: I meant the honourable anon.
I’m an American and a woman, and I actually live in America, and I’m not actually outraged by the thought of this being near a kindergarten. But, to try to play a little devil’s advocate here, I don’t think that what would outrage a lot of people about it (including the, apparently, 38% or so of Slovenians who disapproved) is not that it is nudity–it’s that it’s extremely sexual nudity with a woman in an extremely sexual and submissive position. Those breasts have never breastfed, so I don’t think that’s the association the kids are going to make. I don’t think that it’s especially healthy to have nearly every representation of women in the media be either extremely sexualized or extremely mom-ized…I don’t know if that is the case in Europe, because of course over here, we don’t see most of the ordinary European media (only the occasional “shocker” like this). Despite the lack of overt nudity in advertisement and on television, though, American popular media does show only sexualized or mom-ized women, and that is one of the reasons I think this culture is deeply sick. And, honestly, I don’t think I would want my son to grow up with the dichotomy–well, a woman is either a mom-like or she’s a hot sex object. But I am not saying that that is the general message in Slovenia because I don’t know. Just, before you get all, “Oh, anyone who doesn’t like this must be some retrograde prude,” maybe it’s more than just the nudity that is upsetting some folks.
By the way, see many penises in Slovenian ads? If you don’t (and I assume you don’t), do you want to? If you men don’t want to see penises (or don’t want your daughters to), why would you assume we want to see random (and often surgically-enhanced) breasts thrust into our faces all the time?