https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL6R2yq7R8M
Once again an Air New Zealand video is attracting a lot of attention, but not entirely for the right reasons.
The New Zealand airline are renowned for making an extra special effort with the safety and information videos they broadcast on their flights, having Hobbit and Middle Earth and Bear Grylls-themed efforts in the past, but they have gone too far with their latest effort as far as some are concerned.
The video, entitled ‘The Making of Safety in Paradise’ celebrates 50 years of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition as well as the launch of a flight from Los Angeles to Auckland with a stopover in the idyllic Cook Islands, where it was filmed.
A number of famous SI models, including Jessica Gomes, Chrissy Teigen, Hannah Davis and Ariel Meredith all feature in varying degrees of undress in the safety instructional video, while one of the famous Sports Illustrated models of them all, Christie Brinkley, also makes a cameo from Los Angeles.
The video has come in for scrutiny amongst many commentators in New Zealand, with one, Dr Deborah Russell, a lecturer and feminist commentator at New Zealand’s Massey University, quoted in Fairfax Newspapers saying: "My concern is that as a woman I get on a plane to go to a business meeting say - something serious - and I am confronted by women in bikinis in what are highly sexualised images. That jars.
“I want to be taken seriously but it seems that suddenly they are saying that my sexuality is all that matters about me.”
With nearly 40,000 hits (at the time of writing) on YouTube in less than a day, it’s certainly attracting a lot of attention and we’ll let you make your own judgement on it after watching in the video above.
Video via YouTube/Air New Zealand
