Another nude photo revolutionary for the Muslim world?

Maybe not. Pakistani model Veena Malik has filed suit against FHM India for using this cover photo, which she claims has been "morphed". The magazine says it has proof that the session was consensual and authentic.

And it's not just the nudity that's controversial, both in conservative India and Ms. Malik's home country. "ISI" is a reference to the Pakistani intelligence service.

According to The National Post:

[FHM India editor Kabeer] Sharma said the idea had been to take an ironic swipe at India’s obsession with the ISI. 

A tag line on the cover that points to the initials, reads: “Hand in the end of the world too?”
“People, especially young people in both countries, want to move past this kind of thinking,” the editor said. 

“It’s a very powerful picture — it took a lot of guts for her to do that. It shows a powerful, sexy woman not afraid to speak her mind.”

Speaking her mind, but then taking it back. Is this fear of backlash, or just a publicity stunt?

Either way, it's hard to compare it to Egyptian feminist blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy's not-for-profit and potentially deadly one woman online nude protest. (And note, with irony, the cover headline :Why naked protests are just amateur porn"!)

Putting nude models on the cover of a lad mag is hardly a step forward for feminism in Pakistan. But it does show that the global normalization of sexuality and nudity is affecting even very conservative cultures.

Lest we forget, Hugh Hefner started out not to pornify women, but to sexually liberate the repressed adults of the 1950s. Things went awry as Playboy outlasted the male-dominated society it grew out of, and today it is no better than its grandchildren publications such as FHM.

It's a dangerous road, to be sure, trying to sexually liberate women by sexualizing them. But will the end result mean a more sex-positive world? We'll see...

Tip and pics via Buzzfeed

"Degrading" Lynx ads banned in UK

According to Adfreak, a series of online ads for Lynx (Axe) deodorant have been banned by the UK's ad authority for implying that "using the advertised product would lead to more uninhibited sexual behaviour" and concluded, "we therefore considered that the poster would be seen to make a link between purchasing the product and sex with women and in so doing would be seen to objectify women."

While I find the ads juvenile and tasteless, I'm not sure I buy the ASA definition of how women are objectified in the ads. For example, in the ad above there is no doubt in my mind that the model, Lucy Pinder, is being sexually objectified. But I don't think it's Lynx's laughable claim that it will get you laid by ladmag models that does it. It's the way the model presents her T&A to the camera with a porno stare, with the joke about premature ejaculation. (Which I find pretty funny, given the youthful target market.)

I'm sure anti-rape groups will also be outraged at the implication that it's okay for a man to "lose control" when he sees a woman sexualized like this. But in context of the other ads in the campaign, the pun is made more clear:

I just find the ads irresponsible and degrading to their young male masturbathlete target market as they are to the model (who is at least getting paid). But I still think banning them is the wrong idea. Better to just expose this crap for what it is — lazy, sexist advertising.

F'd Ad Fridays: Lad Mag Humour

The first one is funny, the middle two awkward, and the last one kind of scary. (I don't think a laugh and some boobies are going to fix that one.) But together, they paint a pretty good socioeconomic portrait of Nuts Magazine's target readership.

The advertising seems a little misleading, too. The Nuts site ("Britain's number one men's website") is short on haha and heavy on hooters. It even offers to assess readers' (or, presumably, their aunties') breasts by adding them to the mammary menagerie.

Via AOTW