Swedish mother Maja Koppfeldt was looking at an area map outside a local store with her 10-year-old son to try and locate the Bovallsstrand beach, located at the tip of an islet in Sotenäs municipality.
They found an old-fashioned drawing of a curvaceous brunette, with bare breasts, marking the spot.
“It worries me that women are always seen as sexual objects,” wrote Maja Koppfeldt on a blog on the website MittFunktionsHinder.se.
“She is supposed to symbolize a municipal beach… I find it astounding that a picture like this would make it onto an official map. Who decided that she should look this way?”
Koppfeldt added that she was used to women portrayed in a sexual manner in the media, but said she was surprised it had spread to municipal level.
“When it goes so far that we are even portrayed this way on a tourist map, it scares me,” she wrote.
The local tourist board, meanwhile, defended itself by saying the buxom woman had been used to mark the beach’s location for years.
“It’s been that way since the dawn of time,” board chairman Göran Olsson told the local Bohuslänningen newspaper. He said the board was meeting on Thursday and would discuss the symbol then.
Koppfeldt did not think harking back to days gone by was an adequate defence.
“That’s part of the problem. We have to stop living in the past and look ahead,” she told The Local.
“It’s just totally wrong and pointless. They should change the image.”
The Local/at/dl
Please whitelist us to continue reading.
Member comments