Finland’s PM Sanna Marin made headlines when she became the youngest Prime Minister after assuming the office last year. She was only 34 then. A year later, she’s again making headlines, but this time, for appearing in a photoshoot of a local fashion magazine. Marin is seen wearing a blazer with a plunging necklace with no blouse underneath, leaving Twitter divided.
The shoot, which happened earlier in the month, prompted unwanted criticism and attracted sexist comments on social media.
Commenting on the debate, PM Marin said, “Whatever the choice of a woman seems to be, it is the object of social debate and evaluation. The choice is perceived as a common property from which it can be jointly decided whether it is correct.”
This statement is posted on the unverified account of the local fashion magazine.
“After all, credibility as Prime Minister has eroded…how long does this image policy has to last”, wrote ‘field locust’, a user, on the magazine’s Instagram post.
“Yeah, a real role model. It would have been better in the darkest of clouds. Ridiculous that the breasts of a woman appear in two without a blouse. Someone with taste has a sense of style,” wrote ‘minnakatriinakoskela’, another unimpressed user.
However, soon after drawing criticism, other section of people started posting images of themselves in the same outfit the Finland PM was seen wearing. The hashtag ‘imwithsanna’ started trending on Instagram.
The magazine, on its Instagram account, which is unverified, thanked people for the support and posted the images that users uploaded.
“If you had to generalise it, it will be men saying it was wrong, and women saying it was fabulous,” Mari Paalosalo-Jussinmäki, director of women’s media at A-lehdet magazine group — publisher of Trendi, was quoted as saying by CNNStyle.
“It was a little bit surprising. We’ve had that sort of photo before, obviously, in a woman’s glossy fashion magazine: we have portrayed women in blazers with nothing underneath for years and years, with famous people, and they had never created any response like this,” she added.
“The furore clearly shows that what people saw in the pictures said a lot about the viewer. Many did not see her chest at all – they saw Sanna Marin dressed in a trendy black trouser suit,” Mari Karsikas, Trendi’s editor-in-chief, was quoted by Independent as saying.
“It was hard to interpret the negative comments as anything other than misogyny,” Karsikas added.
