Madam, - It would be seriously negligent of any right-thinking person not to complain about the Sky One advertisement for Nip/Tuck which appeared on page three of your edition of October 14th.
I am writing also to the Advertising Standards Authority about this. I do not believe that your paper has stooped to a level believed traditionally to be occupied by the lesser tabloids. I would be so disappointed if The Irish Times tried to court popularity by having to enlist the "pulling power" of brutish page three dross.
To say that the advertisement in question was one of the most appallingly violent, disturbing and offensive I have ever seen would be indeed very "superficial". It features two women in underwear while two men gaze outwards from a typically fully-clothed, and male, perspective. The women's facial expressions are submissively dumb while a scalpel hangs out of the ribs of one of them.
Is this the kind of barbaric, repulsive and hideously sexist spectacle we can now expect of (what I would like to consider) our eminent national newspaper? It is hoped that such portrayals of either gender are a thing of the past. - Yours, etc,
FLORENCE CRAVEN, Maynooth, Co Kildare.