A series of posters featuring models in bikinis have been defaced or torn down in east London in what appears to be a targeted campaign.
Police have not yet linked it to any religious group, but the use of black paint is reminiscent of attacks on billboards in Peshawar, Pakistan, reported by The First Post.
The east London targets include street-level bikini ads for the popular chain store H&M and the Australian swimwear brand Sea Folly, as well cinema posters for the recently released Bollywood film Kites .
The H&M bus shelter ads are behind perspex cases, which have been daubed with black paint, covering the models' faces and bodies. At street level, they present an easy target compared to the huge billboards defaced in Pakistan, where women's faces have been carefully painted out by campaigners who believe the depiction of uncovered women is un-Islamic.
The Sea Folly ads were simply pasted up, and many have been torn down, leaving shreds of paper hanging where once the famously gap-toothed Australian model Jessica Hart stared out at passers-by in all her bronzed glory.
The Kites ads show the stars of the film, Hrithik Roshan and Barbara Mori, in a clinch. Set in Las Vegas and starring a multinational cast, Kites is Bollywood's latest attempt to make a film designed to appeal to Eastern and Western audiences alike.
Avedon Carol, of Feminists Against Censorship, told the London Evening Standard: "The idea that somehow the image of women being sexy spreads all sorts of horribleness is reactionary and anti-women."
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