Adidas has released a pair of shirts for the World Cup that have been causing controversy for their content and design. The shirts, while meant to be released prior to the World Cup this summer, can be seen as offensive to Brazilians given their not-so-hidden meaning.
One shirt, a bright yellow men's shirt, has a caricature of a woman in a bikini with the text: "Lookin' to Score," while the second one is a green women's shirt with a heart, shaped to look like a woman's behind in a thong. Both shirts have a double entendre about the "sexiness" of Brazilians.
Suffice to say, Brazil's Tourism Board is not happy with the message of these shirts and has even been quoted by local press saying that the shirts would promote illegal activity.
“We don’t accept that the World Cup be used for illegal practices, like so-called sexual tourism,” said head of the Brazilian Tourism Board Flávio Dino to Brazilian news agency O Globo. “We ask that Adidas put a stop to the sale of these products … Brazil has harsh laws to deal with sexual abuse and the police will act on these cases in the national territory.”
Brazil has a notorious reputation for being one of the world's top choices for sex tourism, as the age of consent in the nation is 14, and prostitution is legal. According to Unicef, 250,000 children are sex workers in Brazil and that number is estimated to grow before the World Cup soccer tournament in June 2014. TIME magazine reports that 70 to 80 percent of clients for 'Brazilian pimps' are tourists.
That said, those defending Adidas have pointed out that if the country has a problem with the shirts and prostitution, then the nation should work on changing age of consent and re-defining what is legal in the country. What's more, the shirts don't allude to prostitution per say, even though they have a strong sexual undertone, and could be alluding to the fact that Brazilian women are known to be sexy. Consider this: A 2013 Miss Travel poll ranked Brazilians (men and women alike) as one the sexiest nationalities in the world.
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