A life-size advertisement poster of a nude supermodel has been removed from a shop window in Ballina, Co Mayo, by order of the mayor.
The poster, of Sophie Dahl (daughter of children's writer, Roald Dahl), portrays the size 12 model lying on her back. It was on display in a pharmacy shopfront for three weeks but has been removed following complaints.
Ballina's mayor, Mr Ray Collins, said he objected to the poster as he deemed it offensive to women and suggestive in its pose. He was taking a stand because once this kind of thing started, you never knew where it would stop.
"I got complaints on this from a few women over the phone and some I met in the town. After it was removed, many were delighted but others said they were used to worse with page-three girls in the paper every day.
"But my point is it is offensive to women and Christmas is not the time of year for it. It is women who do all the shopping, the cooking and the lot at Christmas. They have enough going on without having to be subjected to this kind of thing too."
The mayor, an Independent councillor, asked why women were portrayed naked in everything from advertising to films on television and why men were not portrayed in the same way.
Mr Padraic Ward, proprietor of Ward's pharmacy on Pearse Street, Ballina, expressed surprise at the public reaction to the poster. "When the mayor rang and complained, for the craic I put yellow luminous paper over the model's breast and wrote, 'by order of the mayor'. A huge amount had not even noticed the poster until then but after that, cars and trucks at the traffic junction up from the shop would be flashing their lights."
He added that Yves St Laurent, the company responsible for the poster, had difficulty getting pharmacies in the UK to display it, although it is regularly used in women's magazines. Six years ago, when the model in question was a size 16, nobody objected to a nude poster of her on display in his shop window then. "I don't know where she has lost the weight from but I would still have no complaints about her at size 16."
Asked whether sales of the perfume had increased as a result, Mr Ward replied: "Probably, but what I have really noticed is that the sale of Viagra has gone through the roof so obviously this has all had a very good effect on the men of Ballina."
In a spirit of goodwill Mr Ward agreed to remove the offending picture from his window and presented it to the mayor.