So much for its pro-LGBTQIA image?
In Singapore, authorities shortened fashion magazine Vogue Singapore’s publishing permit after it was issued a “stern warning” for its contents that contained nudity and promoted “non-traditional families.”
Despite its image as a global city-state, Singapore actually has strict policies restricting content in all materials published within the city-state, with lifestyle magazines being banned from: 1) “depictions of semi-nude models with breasts and/or genitals covered by hands, materials and objects”; and 2) promoting or glamorizing “alternative lifestyles.”
Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information stated that Vogue Singapore “breached the Content Guidelines for Local Lifestyle Magazines on four occasions within the past two years, for nudity and content that promoted non-traditional families.”
A permit is required to publish and distribute magazines in Singapore. The publication’s permit was, at first, “revoked”. But it re-applied for a permit, and a six-month permit was issued for it.
Singapore’s anti-LGBTQIA “anti-buggery law” (section 377a of the country’s penal code) that criminalized consensual sexual relations between men was only repealed in August 2022. This law, dating back to 1938 when Singapore was under British colonial rule, punished gay consensual sex by a prison sentence of up to two years.
In the past, other International magazines were also sanctioned in Singapore – e.g. in 2014, a local arts magazine was cited for breaching guidelines for “religiously insensitive/denigrative content”; and Cleo and Singapore FHM were penalized for content on “sex, nudity and the promotion of promiscuity and permissive lifestyle” in 2008 and 1998, respectively.
Vogue Singapore – which has a declared print circulation of 25,000 – is owned by Conde Nast.
