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Gay community hits out at ‘fruit’ references

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

February 12, 2003 | 1 min read

Gaywatch, a recently launched media monitoring body, has hit out at the way the gay community is represented by the advertising industry. The latest Alpen Bar ad has proven to be a particular bone of contention.

Gaywatch, which operates in association with Gay.com, believes the actress Arabella Weir is being offensive when she says gyms are “full of nuts and fruits”. The group has called on the ITC to impose a ban on the ads.

The protest follows on the back of a successful appeal against Yahoo! Personal Finance UK’s recent TV campaign. A statement from Gay.com said, “It featured a mincing gay man in a dirty rain coat apparently trying to molest a stag-party reveller tied naked to a tree.” The offending scenes were subsequently removed.

Gaywatch is also unhappy about Virgin Mobile’s current campaign featuring Wyclef Jean and tongue-in-cheek references to male rape.

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