Iran TV Censors Charlize Theron’s Oscar Outfit with (Badly) Drawn Polo-Neck

South African actress and former Oscar winner, Charlize Theron, looked stunning at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, USA, on Sunday night… but her beautiful gold lamé Christian Dior gown was apparently deemed not ‘decent’ enough for Iranian TV censors.

In a very bad effort at ‘photoshopping’, the Iranian Labour News Agency appears to have drawn a digital polo-neck with sleeves on to the top of Charlize’s dress – to cover up her exposed flesh. When she clapped, and the camera angle changed – her dress was instead blocked out with a rectangular blurred box. Watch below. 

Charlize was presenting the Best Foreign Language Film, together with American actress Shirley MacLaine. The award went to Iran’s entry – ‘The Salesman’.

It was collected by businesswoman (and first Iranian in space!) Anousheh Ansari… whose dress was also blurred by the Iranian TV station. She collected the Oscar on behalf of director Asghar Farhadi who had boycotted the Academy Awards in a stand against President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

Watch Iran TV draws dark clothes onto Charlize Theron at Oscars

https://youtu.be/cbD56-AEdSU

During the 2016 Olympics similar videos, claiming to be from the Iranian Sports Channel, showed censored female athletes. But, according to Snopes, these videos turned out to spoofs by satirical sites.

There is no word from Snopes yet on this Oscar video, but most worldwide media seem to be taking it seriously and My Stealthy Freedom, a community for Iranian women’s rights, has issued a statement saying:

“The Oscar for the best censorship goes to the Islamic Republic’s Photoshop team!”

They called the censorship “another typical example of the Islamic Republic’s fear of naked arms of Iranian women” and said it is how Iranian media outlets in the country have covered such events for years. 

“At a time when Farhadi chooses an astronaut and NASA scientist to prove a point about human rights not having ‘borders,’ the Islamic Republic of Iran does the complete opposite…

“This is the Islamic Republic of Iran which forces girls as young as age seven to be covered up. While many of us, including Americans, are expressing our opposition to Trump’s Muslim ban, we also have to be louder and clearer about our condemnation of Islamic Republic of Iran’s ban on women who can’t enter Iran without hijab.”