The Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade of Belarus ordered the removal of an advertising video for the Mogilev Belmash plant from the Internet.
In the video posted on YouTube, girls in only swimsuits work at machines to the song “Satisfaction.”
The plant management explained that in early June, due to abnormal heat, company employees were asked to update the dress code rules. The administration agreed and allowed to wear lightweight clothing if the temperature exceeds +27°C.
A week later, a petition appeared on the Convenient City website in which a group of unknown citizens called the video unethical.
However, the argumentation of the complainants turned out to be not traditionally conservative, as one might expect, but liberal-feminist.
“In our opinion, this advertisement uses the sexual objectification of a woman - reducing her to a sexual object. There is a direct connection between sexual objectification and sexual violence. If society has normalized the attitude towards a woman as an object, it is obvious that the object has no right to refuse or have her own opinion.
Sexualization of the image is appropriate, in our opinion, in advertising a sex shop, but not machines, food, the Internet, or real estate,” the petition said.
The authors of the petition, which was signed by 109 people, demanded that the media that disseminated this advertisement be held accountable, that the plant be punished for insulting women, and that businesses be banned from such advertising.
The ministry considered these demands fair and ordered the plant to stop distributing the video and all Belarusian electronic media to remove it.