Adidas T-Shirts Too Sexy for Brazil

As aptly said by the 1990s group “Right Said Fred”, Brazil has essentially told shoe and fashion giant Adidas, “I’m too sexy for my shirt… so sexy it hurts.” Adidas is the second largest apparel manufacturer in the world and had prepared a line of graphic-tees to commemorate the 2014 World Cup being hosted in Brazil this summer. However, the t-shirts turned out to be “too sexy” for Brazil and a public backlash ensured that has forced Adidas to yank the shirts from their website. As of this moment, those shirts are probably not worth much more than a garment in a hot furnace.

Flavio Dino, Tourism Agency President for Brazil, decried the t-shirts as a form of sexual exploitation which is a criminal offense in his country. Admittedly, some of the t-shirts went too far. In one case, a t-shirt featured the phrase “I {heart} Brazil” but the heart was inverted so as to appear to be a female’s bottom. Brazilian women are known for having curvaceous posteriors.

The big picture is that Brazil is struggling with underage prostitution and is desperate to prevent any high profile incidents regarding widespread child prostitution. Despite ten years of so-called tougher laws, underage prostitution has thrived and become a viable form of tourism. Adidas’ t-shirts only heightened those anxieties.

Source:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/26/news/companies/adidas-sex-tshirts/index.html