Apparently Indonesia is big on gender equality now. Well, at least that seems to be the case in regards to TV censorship.
Just when we thought it couldn’t get anymore ridiculous than when TV censors blurred out parts of Puteri Indonesia 2016 pageant contestants wearing the traditional Indonesian kebaya, it appears that men’s body parts are equally yucky and must be censored too.
No, we’re not talking about graphic nudity. This time, local TV station Net TV blurred out a man’s nipples during an infotainment program.
And the man actually had a perfectly legitimate reason to have his nipples out. He was wearing a traditional Javanese costume during what is presumably one of the happiest days of his life – his wedding.
We must admit we were skeptical about the authenticity of the screenshots above at first as it could just be an attempt to discredit the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) who have been accused of censoring things left, right and center these days. But after careful research, we found out that it was not a hoax at all:
The good part starts at 02:53, but feel free to watch from the very beginning to learn more about pre-honeymoon hormone pills 🙂
That episode aired in December 2015 so maybe male nipples have been big no-nos for a while now, at least with Net TV.
Now it’s easy to blame this excessive conservatism on the KPI, but they actually defended themselves saying that those responsible for blurring images on TV are the TV stations themselves.
Be that as it may, we suspect that the TV stations are under pressure to censor what the KPI may deem as too risque since they don’t want to risk being sanctioned by the commission. We don’t believe that most TV stations, like Net, would want to be prudish on purpose.
