TelegramRussian advertising standards officials have caused outrage by agreeing to run an advert which claims having small breasts is a ‘physical defect’.
The strange ruling came about after a number of complaints were made about an advert, which depicted a woman measuring her chest to advertise ‘small prices and lots of complexes’.
Though the officials agreed with complaints the advert body-shames women, they also said small breasts were ‘physical defects’.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ruled the billboard, run by Akvilon Invest, used an ‘offensive image of a women’.
However, it added: ‘expert council found the advertisement points to physical defects in woman (small breasts).’
Nastya Krasilnikova, an anti-sexism blogger, said:
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Federal Antimonopoly Service staff don’t even suspect that there’s anything wrong or offensive to women about how they handled this.
The advert has been accused of body shaming, after the picture, which was advertising the construction company, declared their buildings had ‘small prices and lots of complexes’.
Wikimedia Commons The company who ran the advert have previously come under fire for using a picture of a woman undressing to advertise flats cheaper than ‘renting’, apparently alluding to prostitution, The Sun reports..
Nastya added:
Probably, the person who wrote this thinks it’s perfectly obvious that a small chest is a physical disability.
Earlier this year, people protested against another Akvilon advert which used a photo of a large woman, which was captioned ‘even the discount is fatter after the holidays’.
TelegramSpeaking to Meduza, Nastya added:
Probably, the person who wrote this thinks it’s perfectly obvious that a small chest is a physical disability.
This story tells us one simple thing about Russia, sexism is part of the culture.
Nastya Krasilnikova says working in media has highlighted the underlying sexism in Russian journalism and advertising:
At some point, I started paying attention to how many sexist pieces are published every day in Russian glossy magazines, whose entire audience is women.
This dissonance shocked me — it still shocks me. This is ostensibly media for women, but the texts in these publications demean these same women.
Because of this, Nastya started blogging about the most shocking pieces of sexist advertising in Russia, such as the example above. She even started her ‘Museum of Sexism’ hashtag.
Nastya continued:
My audience is very diverse. These are people who live in different cities across Russia and in different countries. I used to think that it was mainly women reading me, but actually I often hear from men.
For the billboard depicting small breasts as physical defects, Akvilon Invest, face a fine of 500,000 rubles ($7,410).
However, Nastya believes standards in the Russia media are gradually improving, as people are no longer indifferent to the situation, and are prepared to do something about it.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.