Smurfette removed from poster to appease ultra-Orthodox Jews

A PR company was forced to crop out the female ‘Smurfette’ to placate an ultra-Orthodox Haredi Israeli neighbourhood, the International Business Times reported.

The company, Mirka’im-Hutzot Zahav, responsible for regional promotion of the movie Smurfs: The Lost Village, removed the images of the Smurfette to avoid offending the residents of the Tel Aviv suburbs of Bnei Brak.



The decision was slammed by the Israel Religious Action Centre on Twitter, which said that it was an “absurd example of excluding representations of the female form.”

“Smurfette. She’s a cartoon ppl,” the organisation said.

https://t.co/IfkR6tpHH6 An absurd example of excluding representations of the female form: Smurfette. She’s a cartoon ppl! pic.twitter.com/medNizUr9Z

— IRAC (@Israel_RAC) March 28, 2017

According to the Independent, this is not the first time where female protagonists images have been omitted from posters. Earlier, Jennifer Lawrence – who plays the lead in the Hunger Games franchise, was edited out of promotional posters, while Tinkerbell from Disney’s Peter Pan was also taken out from the advertisements.



The ultra-Orthodox Israeli press has previously faced scrutiny for removing females from news articles, the newspaper added. In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was cropped out in photos from a solidarity march in Paris following Charlie Hebdo attacks, while Hillary Clinton was also missing from 2016’s US presidential coverage.

The town, with a population of 180, 000 is often criticised by liberal Israelis for engaging in “modesty wars”. Some Orthodox Jews who disagree with Haredis’ stance of controlling women’s dress code have responded by taking then hardline sect to court and erecting images of women, the IBT reports.

Their influence, however, seems to be growing regardless considering the estimates, quoted by the newspaper show that one in five Israelis will follow the Haredi concepts by 2030.