Derick – a new office mate pulled out the latest T3 from his stash of magazines and pointed this out to me – thought it was quite blogworthy.

In the famous tradition of all T? magazines till date – this one features a scantily clad hottie on the cover showing off her bare essential – the latest Nintendo DS, ofcourse!!!
How appropriate and within context .. dontya thinnnk ?? ;P

Anyway.. the meat of this post (accidental pun ..oops) lies entirely in the discrepancy that one may find on the subscription page inside the same magazine which shows the same hottie in a concealing albeit ugly dress resembling a prairie wagon – showing little or absolutely no skin whatsoever…
why ?? why the disharmony between the two images one may ask !??

aaah – elementary my dears: different markets – different levels of exposure of the human skin. What might be acceptable as normality in Lebanon will be seen upon as ‘haram’ or ‘sinful’ in a more islamic and conservative market such as Saudi. Infact its not even surprising to note that when designing adverts for a market such as Saudi – us designers can only use images of male models or veiled females.

No Women = No Problem of Censorship !! thats the way it is in this enchanting land ;P

The Censorship however does not end there – it goes a little beyond that. When PhotoRetouching proves to be tooo expensive – Ol Sharpie comes to the rescue….Whip it out and start blacking out whatever might seem the least bit ‘haraam’. This may include Deities of other religions, Cleavages, Butt Cracks and a certain animal whose name begins with the letter P.

July 2003 issue of ‘India Today’ picked off the magazine racks from a local vendor

You catch my drift…
Fellow Dubai Blogger Keith Williamson too posted a hilarious account on Censorship last month – be sure to check it out here. Just to entice you to visit his page.. here is a snippet;

…. If you ventured into a record shop (you had to be a male-type person to do this – femmes were actually not allowed), you might see CDs on display. The cover might feature a good-lookin’ person of the female persuasion. And whatever she was wearing would be invisible because the censors would have blacked it out up to the neck. And luscious red lips were a no-no also, they would be given a black moustache treatment. You were supposed to be happy to pay good money for this!

hillllarious….!

Disclaimer:
Although funny and quite blogestuous ( a lovely adjective from ish – thanks! ), posts such as this are not in anyway meant to pose ridicule to any community or religion whatsoever. They are an account of the idiosyncracies that exist in different countries, cultures and regions of the world and therefore should be taken light heartedly ;) if however posts such as these are considered offensive – please let me know.