September 3, 2021
A Persian-language ice cream commercial has been pulled from Instagram by order of Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance because of its “deviant” content—the video bordered on the salacious.
A source at the ministry told Iranian media that “action” would be taken against the Tehran-based firm responsible for the advertisement, Domino Dairy.
“This teaser was posted online without a permit,” the source said. “But an hour after it was posted, after it was discovered by our colleagues in the advertising field, the clip – which was produced and published in violation of regulations – was removed and the company was served with the required warnings and admonitions.”
The advertisement showed an attractive woman in a loose headscarf driving through mountain scenery before parking her car and taking a bite from a chocolate ice cream bar on a stick with a very sensuous look on her face—too sensuous for the authorities.
IranWire said the ad appeared to have been copied from an ad for Magnum, a British ice cream bar.
Regime-aligned outlets wasted no time in condemning the ad. The Fars news agency, which is affiliated with the Pasdaran, called the commercial “disgusting.”
“Recently a famous ice cream maker published a video clip that drew reactions from social media users,” Fars reported. “In this clip, a woman, improperly dressed and with totally erotic and sexual mannerisms and gestures, which are precisely at the heart of the commercial, promotes the ice cream by eating it.”
Other media outlets howled that the commercial “misused women.” For the past 40 years, the charged term “misuse of women” has been used in legal arguments to censor and shut down publishers that do not toe the official ideological line.
Under Chapter 8 of the Islamic Republic’s Advertisement Laws and Regulations, the wide-ranging “misuse” of women, men and children is prohibited in commercial ads.
Chapter 9 of the same law also states that ads must not give “preferential treatment” to males or females. Elsewhere, it stipulates, “The use of sexual attraction in advertisements is banned.”