Too Far? Polish Parliamentary Candidate Goes Topless in New Ad

One surefire way to get attention for your parliamentary bid? Take your clothes off in a striptease campaign ad.

That's exactly what Katarzyna Lenart did for her run for Polish parliament, and now she's getting some backlash.

The online ad starts off with a dressed Lenart, sitting suggestively in a chair, "Basic Instinct" style. As music plays, the Democratic Left Alliance candidate pulls off her tie and tosses it at the camera. She pushes her chair back and first peels off her jacket, then her buttoned shirt, revealing her bra. As she takes it off, the word "Censored" flashes on the screen, followed by the slogan, "Want more? Vote SLD. Only we can do more."

According to AFP, Lenart, a 23-year-old political science student, said she decided to go the "sex sells" route after a previous, more run-of-the-mill ad didn't attract voter interest.

"I thought it was time to cause a stir," she told Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza. "My campaign targets young people, and young people are only interested in controversial stuff, unfortunately."

"I don't think it was vulgar or obscene. You can hardly see anything," she added, noting that it had taken guts to strip.

But not everyone in Poland shared her sentiments -- even in her own party.

"Party political broadcasts like this should not exist," Tomasz Kalita, a Democratic Left Alliance spokesman, told the newspaper. "Every candidate has the right to make their own campaign material, but there are limits."

Lenart's ad comes a month after one Canadian member of parliament saw her cleavage apparently photoshopped out of her official portrait.