Air New Zealand Safety Video. Inappropriate or not?
An Air New Zealand safety video has caused a lot of controversy and even received 11,000 signatures on a petition asking for it to be removed from future flights because it is inappropriate. (Safety Video found below)
The safety video was released in February 2014 in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Sports Illustrated magazine. The safety video shows bikini-clad women performing the seat belt demonstration, how to inflate the life vests and all the other things usually performed in “traditional” safety videos.
The petition claims the following:
“This video completely disregards passengers who find it offensive for religious reasons, who have body image struggles, who are parents concerned about their children’s impressionable nature, who believe women deserve more respect, and who have teenage daughters who deserve more respect. This video is culturally insensitive; it disregards those who are conservative by nature and are uncomfortable with its imagery and disregards passengers who have been exposed to sexual assault. This video creates an unnecessarily difficult and uncomfortable working environment for its female staff, which goes against the entire nature of safety.
This video forces itself upon the passengers; it is played in the small confines of an aircraft there is no option to turn off the video. This video offends those who value the right to choose. Air NZ appears determined to insist that skies are sexy regardless of who they offend,” the petition continued.”
Air New Zealand on the other hand says this video is not meant to objectify or sexualize the female body, it is meant to celebrate, honor and promote the popular sports magazine A spokesperson for Air New Zealand told Buzzfeed it isn’t removing the video from its rotation of safety videos in response to the petition but had always intended to phase it out as it would with any outdated safety video.
Share your thoughts on the video in the comments section.
Click here to see the petition.
Didn’t Air New Zealand have a nude safety video a few years back? Of course, it was cleverly filmed using seat backs, etc. so that “nothing” was shown. Those Kiwis are so clever!
I’m offended by their stereotyping of residential recreational aquatic facility technicians in the “Los Angeles” scene. This video should be pulled immediately.