Feminazist protests in Italy due to Toscani's calendar showing female pubis

Eso texto en español en lo Paraíso Tangible: Protestas feminazistas en Italia por el calendario de Toscani que mostra pubis femeninos, http://avezdoshomens2.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/protestas-feminazistas-en-italia-por-el-calendario-de-toscani/

Texto original em português no O Reino de Deus: Protestos feminazistas na Itália pelo calendário de Toscani que mostra púbis feminino, http://oreinodedeus.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/protestos-feminazistas-na-italia-pelo-calendario-de-toscani/

Protests in Italy due to a calendar by Toscani showing female pubis

The controversial Toscani's calendar, exhibited in Florence. | Afp

• Women's associations are trying to avoid disclosure
• Toscani defend himself because the pictures show "the heart of seduction"

Afp | Roma

Updated Sunday, 01/16/2011 17:33 hours

An advertising schedule consisting entirely of pictures of female pubic signed by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani caused a wave of protests in Italy, where feminists are campaigning to prevent its publication.

In the calendar appears every month a different pubis alternating close-ups of the blond, brown or red hair.

"I wanted to take pictures of the glamor of the traditional fashion photos, where women walk in high heels, taking her lips painted red, and where it shows everything except the female triangle, the real heart of seduction", said the photographer.

Oliviero Toscani, the king of provocation, became famous for making controversial campaigns for the Benetton during the 90s.

The calendar was commissioned by a consortium of businessmen tanners of hides, which also has been criticized by women's organizations. The Todas Libres Association believes that photographer makes a parallel between the leathery skin of an animal and female skin.

Campaign unethical

While Toscani insists that their pictures are a symbol of natural beauty, a feminist group thinks the company is unethical. "We are outraged by this nth example of women's bodies used to do advertising. Does Toscani suggests that the essence of woman is found in sex? asks Roberta Gavagna, of the anti-violence association Artemisia.

It is not the first time that the Milanese photographer, 69, is in the eye of the hurricane: in 2007, launched the controversial campaign against anorexia, starring Isabelle Caro, a young anorexic model of skeletal body, who died last November.

But far from being intimidated by criticism, Toscani strongly defended his latest work: "There are many calendars of sexy women showing their buttocks. My photos are not evil, they capture a beautiful and healthy part of the body", he argues.

The calendar, which had a circulation of 76,000 copies will be distributed with the Italian version of the magazine "Rolling Stone".

Given this situation, the City Council of Florence, the capital of Tuscany, just this week approved unanimously a resolution to render the businessmen consortium to withdraw the calendar.

"These images fit the stereotypes and it's offensive to reduce women to their sex", complained Maria Federica Giuliani, of the office in Florence for Equal Opportunities.

An argument rejected by the consortium of tanners who asks: "Is it normal that authorities worry about a timetable which is nothing vulgar when there are problems much worse in the leather industry?", said its agent Simone Remi.

"Our companies meet all environmental norms of health and safety, but must compete with companies that break the rules, make illegal hires, and defile. This is not a real scandal at all?", indignates Remi.

Toscani's whole career has been surrounded by scandal after illustrate the Benetton advertising campaigns with a man dying of AIDS in 1992 or sentenced to death in the USA (2000). Some of his campaigns have been banned in Italy, as one that showed two men kissing.

The body of Italian advertising self-regulation invited Vera Pelle not to announce this calendar, which "constitutes an attack on human dignity, since it compares the body of a woman with skin of leather."

Translated from http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/01/14/cultura/1294996824.html

Comments by Paraíso Concreto

Why a calendar with a dozen female pubis is so unsettling? Why a calendar like that is more serious than businessmen making illegal hires? Why feminists reject machismo when it imposes rules for them to leave home and they accept the same machismo as the woman's pubic hair on display?

Forecast of new texts to the serie "Machismo was created by women" in English in brief:

Part 4: why a macho society discriminates prostitution and pornography?

Part 7: Why even feminists are moralists?

For now, I'll download another thwack: "The advertising of the beer Devassa and calendar with female pubis: is the society macho or it's just lesbo-nazi-moralist hysteria?" at Paraíso Concreto and A Vez das Mulheres at Thumblogger.

Abigail Pereira Aranha