Thailand doesn’t want to see your underboob selfies

If you thought Facebook and Instagram had harsh policies when it comes to breast-baring, wait till you hear how Thailand feels. The government’s just announced that underboob selfies contravene its Computer Crimes Act, and anyone found taking them could be subject to a five year jail sentence.

As The Daily Dot reports, the law doesn’t specifically mention bare or partially uncovered breasts, but it does put the kibosh on ‘any obscene computer data which is accessible to the public’. Thailand’s culture ministry said offenders would face up to five years in jail for sharing any photo that featured visible underboob. (Sidenote: remember when breasts weren’t divided into distinct areas? Life was so simple then.)

Anandha Chouchoti, a spokesperson for the country’s culture ministry, confirmed that the government was taking a strict approach to these photos, because they don’t want it to be a trend. ‘When people take these ‘underboob selfies’ no one can see their faces,’ she said. ‘So it’s like, we don’t know who these belong to, and it encourages others to do the same.’

They haven’t confirmed how they’ll prove participants are guilty, given that this type of picture is so often anonymous, but if you’re heading that way this year, you might want to keep your top on in your selfies to be on the safe side – or at least not post anything that breaks Thai laws until you’re back in the UK, where we have a proud heritage of public ogling.

Image via Vinoth Chandar’s Flickr.

Diane Shipley