IKEA masturbation incident in China forces company to tighten security
She did it herself, all right.
A woman was caught on camera masturbating while half-naked in a Chinese IKEA store, prompting the DIY furniture company to pledge stricter security.
The two-minute pornographic clip shows the unidentified woman wearing just a white shirt as she pleasures herself in various sections of the store.
As other shoppers walk by, the woman initially sat on a chair, touching herself as she thrust her butt toward the camera.
She then sat on a bed with her legs spread wide — at one point seeming to catch the eye of some guys walking past — before taking off her shirt in a more secluded spot in the store.
After going viral, the X-rated footage was soon scrubbed from Chinese social media — but with interest so high, even the Swedish furniture giant’s response got 9 million views, according to Agence France-Presse.
We resolutely oppose and condemn this kind of behavior, and immediately reported it to the police in the city of the suspected store,” IKEA said in a statement, without revealing the name of the branch.
The homeware group said Saturday it would take “even more careful security and public cleanliness measures” and encouraged all customers to “browse stores in an orderly and civilized way,” AFP said.
Chinese citizens can face up to 10 days’ administrative detention for deliberate public nudity, while those who upload and disseminate obscene content online face up to 15 days’ detention and a maximum fine of 3,000 yuan, or just under $425, the agency said.
Some Chinese social media users have speculated it was a store in Guangdong province, as Cantonese — spoken in parts of southern China — can be heard in the background store announcements.
With nobody wearing a face mask, it is also assumed that the pornographic clip was filmed before the coronavirus outbreak, which brought China to a standstill from late January. The pandemic had forced IKEA to temporarily close stores around the world, including all 50 in its second-biggest market, the United States.
“This woman is so brave, I don’t understand, [she’s] just doing it in broad daylight,” read one Weibo post that gained more than 8,000 likes.
“There are so many people around, I just don’t understand,” another wrote.
It is not the first explicit video to cause a stir on China’s tightly controlled social media platforms, AFP noted.
A Beijing branch of the Japanese clothing chain Uniqlo became infamous in 2015 after a clip of a couple having sex in one of its changing rooms went viral.
Police arrested five people, including the young couple in the video, over the matter, while Uniqlo firmly denied that it was a publicity stunt.
The clip “severely violated socialist core values,” the Chinese Cyberspace Administration said at the time.
