Remember the Dolce & Gabanna ad I posted about last Friday?

Well, Dolce and Gabbana stops all advertising in Spain

Tue Mar 13, 1:58 PM ET
Italian fashion house Dolce and Gabbana said on Tuesday it would stop all its advertising in Spain after it was forced to withdraw an advert for “justifying” violence against women.

Also on Tuesday another Italian fashion icon, Giorgio Armani, expressed surprise over similar criticism in Spain for one of its advertisements.

“Following the harsh criticism levelled by the Spanish authorities against an image in (one of our) publicity campaigns .. Dolce and Gabbanna announces the withdrawal from Spain of all its advertising campaigns to protect the creative freedom that has always characterised the brand,” the company said in a statement.

“Recently, Spain, with its climate of censorship, has shown itself willing to negatively interpret all messages even when there is no reason to do so,” the Dolce and Gabbanna statement said.

“Even though it goes against the interests of Dolce and Gabbana, the decision to halt brand advertising in this country has become unavoidable,” it added

The offending advert showed a woman pinned to the ground by a bare-chested man holding her wrists, with other men in the background looking on impassively.

In February D and G was forced to pull the advert after the Women’s Institute of Spain, a government agency, and a consumer association said it glorified “chauvinist violence”.

It was also banned in Italy in March and subsequently pulled from the world market.

The spanish women’s institute said the advert allowed people to think it was “justified to use force against women.”

In a reference to similar criticism in Spain of an advert by Giorgio Armani, D and G said it “hoped other stylists … will take measures against Spain, which is not only the first country to make illegitimate accusations, but which has also helped spark controversy in other countries.”

A local Madrid official said last week that an Armani advertisement showing two young girls wearing lipstick was “borderline,” indicating that he would seek to have it banned.

“I do not consider it normal that two girls so young should appear with make-up on their lips,” Arturo Canalda told Spanish media, claiming the advert could promote “sexual tourism.”

Hat tip: Jeremayakovka, who is also posting TownHall

Yesterday was International Women’s Day

Celebrated on 8 March, International Women’s Day (IWD) is the global day connecting all women around the world and inspiring them to achieve their full potential.

Well, that’s a nice sentiment, but I for one believe that all people should be inspired to achieve their full potential.

Women don’t need to look to the UN for inspiration. Or to the government, or, least of all, to the thought police.

As it happened, yesterday morning I was discussing women with Spanish journalist Maria Blanco. Maria’s latest article (in Spanish) deals with a weird Dolce & Gabbana ad that has caused quite a furore in Europe, and the thought police are calling for more government intervention to protect us from ourselves.

Here’s the ad in question:

Considering D&G’s prior ads, this is pretty mild.

The ad has caused a huge controversy in Spain, France2 was scandalized into reporting on it, and now Amnesty International in Italy is asking that the ad be pulled from Italian magazines.

Think about that for a moment: millions of men, women, and children are opressed around the world, abused, enslaved, and executed, and AI/I finds time to protest an ad in a fashion magazine.

As Maria explains in her article, D&G’s ad features their characteristic

transgresion, provocation, the erotic wink, and as they themselves explain, the ad campaign is about images “that explore the thin border between morality and immorality, two parallel dimensions that coexist and divide the world”.

As it turns out, the Spanish government’s Instituto de la Mujer (IM) (Women’s Institute) is being pressured to ban the ad by the Green party, the leftlist Facua – a consumer organization affiliated with the University of Havana, that bastion of free thought – and others, because of a possible violation of section 3 of the Advertising Law (oh, yes, the Spanish have advertising laws) banning advertising that might exploit women, shows women as stereotypes, or promotes violence against women.

Maria Blanco looks at the ad and explains

In the first place, the woman in the ad is a model who has voluntarily agreed to the use of her body in a photographic composition

On the second issue, Maria explains that what raises the feminists’ hackles is the highlight on the woman’s desireable body.

So the feminazis [Maria’s word] that indoctrinate us for our own good and that penalize what they so unfortunately describe as the “objectifying of women”, are only rebroadcasting the idea that our bodies are shameful and shouldn’t be shown off as we will. We can show our other gifts, particularly those that make us like men… but not our sexual gifts.

Additionally, the Spanish Green party is also criticizing the ad because one of the guys is holding a glass (the photo above is cropped and doesn’t show it, not because I wanted to but because this is the one I could find), which would incite people to consume alcohol.

I kid you not: the Greens believe that showing a photograph of someone holding a glass is going to drive you to drink.

No wonder they think this overstylized picture will incite the masses into a frenzy.

Maria continues

The picture mainly portrays a woman’s sexual fantasy… She’s calmly offering herself to one or several, voluntarily, in front of other good looking men. There’s no violence at all, no pornography.

As Maria sees it,

What there is, is eroticism, fantasy and subtlety.

But there is a larger issue here:

In all, this preocupation with our well-being shows the immaturity of our female leaders. They didn’t get past the image of the neolithic man that kidnapped women from other tribes to rape and to replicate his genes. As a (male) friend said, they have remained in the ideological adolescence of the 1960s and 70s. By doing so, they have becomen women’s worst repressors, the worst agressors against the sexual freedom of each of us women.

The political comissariat indoctrinating us is missing out on a great deal of pleasures.

France2’s reporter in Italy interviewed several people on the street, and the one man they talked to said, “I don’t like it, but if you don’t want to look at the ad, don’t buy the magazine”. Of course, the ideologues would never ever think of that, because it’s all about the ideology. They know what’s good for you.

But, as Maria later asked in an email,

And what about us women who like tenderness, with imagination, fantasy, and dreams but without going too far beyond… are we stupid?

Hay que defenderse y dar la cara, la cara tierna, libre, imaginativa, femenina y, de nuevo, por si alguien tiene dudas… la libre, la cara libre de la mujer.

We must stand up for ourselves, and show our faces, the tender, free, imaginative, femenine face, and again, if anyone has any doubt, the free face of a woman.

Brava, Maria.

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As a postscript, in the evening I was watching France2 news and they were talking about women in power while saying that Margaret Thatcher didn’t bring about progress and “was on the masculine side”.

That’s what happens when you are not popular with the bien pensant, even on International Women’s Day.

Update, Saturday 10 March: Atlas Shrugs and The Hill Chronicles are posting about it.

My friend Laura posed an interesting question,

In view that it’s leftist groups asking for censorship, I wonder what the reaction would have been if Christian groups or the Vatican had been doing the asking?