The controversial commercial Julia Louis-Dreyfus made for Israel’s YES satellite television company has been pulled off the air, Contact Music reports.
The commercial showed Louis-Dreyfus rubbing an overweight woman’s stomach in an elevator and wishing her a congratulations only to find out she’s not pregnant, and she spends the rest of the commercial trying to fix her mistake. Israeli women went up in arms after the commercial aired, complaining it was offensive to overweight women. Na’mat, Israel’s women’s organization had their chairwoman Galit Wolloch complaining to Israel’s Channel 2, and took to Facebook to write how insulting and condescending the commercial’s message was.
The bit was finally axed after officials from Israel’s Yedid Association for Community Empowerment issued a formal complaint letter, calling the commercial an “evident and unjustified insult to a substantial majority of the people”.
“There are a lot of weight-challenged individuals in Israel who are treated in an irreverent and hurtful manner. There is no justification to illustrate a stigma which suggests a larger woman is either pregnant or simply too fat for anyone to consider going out with,” the letter read.
Yes removed the promo yesterday, and said in the statement “the Yes commercial has been hurtful to a portion of the public, despite the inherent freedom of speech in advertising media. Should there be a new request to air the spot, the authority will need to re-examine the material and deliberate then.”
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