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Published: 11/02/2014 01:48 PM

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Jackie Chamoun comments
on nude photo controversy

Jackie Chamoun.
Jackie Chamoun.
Jackie Chamoun.
Jackie Chamoun.
Jackie Chamoun.
Jackie Chamoun.
Jackie Chamoun.

BEIRUT - Lebanese ski champion Jackie Chamoun commented on a campaign waged against her on social media websites for posing nude for an Austrian ski calendar, and asked Lebanese Facebook users to stop spreading the photos and support her instead, as she trains to participate in the Olympics in Russia.


“Now that I’m at the Olympic Games, these photos that I never saw before are being shared. It is sad. All I can ask to each of you who saw this, is to stop spreading it, it will really help me [focus] on what is really important now: my training and my race,” Chamoun wrote on her Facebook page.

 

The campaign began when Al-Jadeed television published a video of the making of the photo shoot, labeling it as “a scandal.”

 

In her Facebook post, the ski champion apologized for the photos and said that she understood the criticism against the shoot, which took place in Lebanon’s Faraya ski resort.

 

“I want to apologize to all of you, I know that Lebanon is a conservative country and this is not the image that reflects our culture. I fully understand if you want to criticize this.”

 

She also noted that the photos were taken three years ago, adding that they were not supposed to go public.

 

“I just want to make it clear to everyone who commented, and shared the photos that appeared on the net in Lebanon yesterday. Yes I did photos for an Austrian ski calendar with other professional athletes 3 years ago.”

 

“The video and photos that you are now seeing are part of the making [of], the preparation, it wasn’t supposed to go public.”

Jackie Chamoun.

I want to apologize to all of you, I know that Lebanon is a conservative country and this is not the image that reflects our culture. I fully understand if you want to criticize this.

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  • Ur scum

    Lebanon is nothing but a misogynistic country that looks down on women. If she wants to pose nude who cares get over it. She shouldn't apologize. The only thing she should apologize for is for being from the disgusting country in the first place.

    February 14, 2014

  • jad.ismail

    Sorry jackie...but you should be a little smarter..good luck.

    February 12, 2014

  • jad.ismail

    Hanibaal....its lebanon ...not saudi arabia gays or lesbiens...and not romania naked womens on beach...its lebanon of nizar kabani and rafik hariri and kamil chamoun ect....and no different between cristians or muslim.. we are lebanes.

    February 12, 2014

  • Hanibaal-Atheos

    Jad... I know it is Lebanon. But we have to admit the fact that Christian society in Lebanon is more open, more tolerant, and more accepting of personal freedoms such as the one that Jacky Chamoun took than Muslim society in general. In the 1960s and 1970s, Muslim Ministers in the Lebanese government banned pop artists like Johnny Halliday, the Beatles and others from performing in Lebanon. I doubt very much that a young Lebanese Muslim woman of the same age as Jacky Chamoun would ever be allowed by her community to compete in the Olympics, let alone consider posing semi-nude for a calendar. Christians in Lebanon tend to follow the social mores of the West (stupidly sometimes, but they do), whereas Muslims in Lebanon tend to stick with customs they get from Saudi Arabia and Iran. All you have to do is walk around the Shiite areas, the Druze areas, and Sunni areas. Just get out of Beirut, and you'll see with your own eyes that we are not as similar as you want us to pretend to be. There are two Lebanons. We have to admit this first to ourselves in order to begin solving this problem that has kept us at war for 40 years. We can't keep our heads in the sand and pretend that there is nothing wrong, just so that we "appear" to be united. I mean, we have been killing each other for 40 years. There is something wrong.

    February 13, 2014

  • rabeca.issa

    Reality is that Arab is not a country, Arab is not a passport, Arab is not a race, Arab is not a continent, Arab is not a union, Arab is fake and the creation of political corruption and media addiction to oil money helping the destruction of the minorities in the region, Lebanese are the Phoenicians more like the Mediterranean Island people in color, Food and more.

    February 12, 2014

  • Hanibaal-Atheos

    I agree, but I don't see the connection with the article.

    February 12, 2014

  • Hanibaal-Atheos

    Lebanese Christian society is generally more liberal than Lebanese Muslim society, so Ms. Chamoun is wrong in saying that Lebanese culture is conservative across the board. She should not apologize to all the barbarian neanderthals who believe Lebanon should be like Saudi Arabia. Lebanon is supposed to be a country of freedoms, individual freedoms. Those barbarians who do not condone what Chamoun did should not look at the photos. Posing semi-nude for calendars is something very respectable people do every day in western democracies. It is is not scandalous. Only barbarian conservatives think so. Lebanon should set its standards by comparing itself to western democracies, and not to barbaric religious (...) like Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Gulf emirates or other backward places. Finally, what Jacky Chamoun did is nothing compared to all the crimes, all the corruption, all the killing, all the sex crimes and prostitution that are endemic to Lebanon...but it is all hidden and covered. We are hypocrites to pretend to be conservative on the surface, when we are debauched and filthy on the inside. The scandal is what our politicians have been doing to us for 40 years of wars, killings and massacres, and not the innocent attempt by a Lebanese Olympic athlete to promote her sport and her country like thousands of other athletes do. Enough hypocrisy.

    February 11, 2014

  • MattNash

    Sad that she changed her tone. She was fine with the photos around two weeks ago(...)

    February 11, 2014

  • Hanibaal-Atheos

    She fears the conservative religious onslaught in this country of barbarians. What do you expect when you have killers, terrorists, religious fundamentalists and other scum running around the country pillaging, plundering, killing and assassinating ad libitum, AND dictating policy on social and moral isues and personal liberties? I understand that she does not want to be the scapegoat for this sort of primitive theater. The question is: Where are the more "liberal" politicians and leaders in the sports and arts fields to stand up for her and defend her? This is Lebanon; this is not Saudi Barbaria.

    February 11, 2014