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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joseph Pareti who wrote (29477)	4/7/1999 8:28:00 AM
From: Al Cano	Respond to of 45548

Now What? 3Com's Nude Ad Under Fire. Who approved it? Promote or Fire? SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Some women are calling a high-tech company's advertisement displaying a nude woman sexist and a transportation agency has banned the ad from bus shelters. The 3Com Corp. ad features a photograph of a naked woman curled up in a fetal position while holding a Palm V hand-held electronic personal organizer. The ad, which shows no private body parts, is on 20 billboards and dozens of bus shelters in San Francisco. Similar ads are running in Newsweek and Conde Nast Traveler magazines. ''It stereotypes the role of women as the object of desire, not just in selling liquor or pantyhose but computers,'' said Sylvia Paull of GraceNet, a group of San Francisco Bay area women who work in technology. The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority refused to put the ads on bus shelters. ''We felt our overall ridership would not respond positively to its artistic intent,'' spokeswoman Doreen Moreno said. Officials with Santa Clara-based 3Com argued the ads are tasteful, although more typical of tobacco and alcohol companies. ''If you wanted to be sexist, you'd have her like those images in car ads, slithering across the hoods,'' said David Hunter, of Foote, Cone & Belding, the firm that created the ads. The ads have become popular fodder for parody on the Internet. One Web designer posted four salacious photographs of women holding the new Palm V under the title ''Simply Porn.'' He posted the mock ads next to a copy of 3Com's ad, which the company later ordered him to remove.