A beer bottle label has caused a row in Russia over its use of sado-masochistic imagery, exacerbated by the decision of a state agency to run an online poll for or against it. The Kopytov Brewery in Barnaul, a city in the Altai region of Siberia, launched its new Pryanik Imperial Stout with a stylised close-up of a woman with a ball-gag in her mouth, designed to look like a traditional Russian pryanik honey cake, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reports.
The brewery's Instagram account lauds the craft beer as an "aromatic tsunami of cinnamon, clove, anise, black pepper and juniper, just like a real pryanik - but damned alcoholic".
But Yuliya Shlyakhova, a fashion designer formerly of Barnaul but now living in St Petersburg, complained to the Anti-Monopoly Service that the image "displays violence towards women, and is obscene and offensive".
he brewery, meanwhile, insists that it meant no offence, has great respect for women, and favours "humour, art, and what is appropriate".
The Altai branch of the Anti-Monopoly Service then took the step of setting up an online vote to see whether or not the public found the advert offensive, on the grounds that "a comprehensive review requires a study of social opinion".
The Altai branch has tried this method before over complaints of "fat-shaming" in two adverts by fitness clubs, according to the local Bankfax news site, but it was not prepared for the scale or tenor of the response on this occasion.
The idea of letting a poll play a role in a quasi-legal process has caused almost as much as a stir as the label itself, and it has all played out on the Service's VK social media account, where it opened a forum for the public to post their views.
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