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Russian Anti-Gay Lawmaker Furious With Erotic Hairdressers in Siberia

A scantily-clad woman giving a haircut at a Moscow hairdresser in 2000. Igor Tabakov / MT

A Russian lawmaker famous for authoring anti-gay legislation is now focusing his wrath on an upcoming hair salon in Siberia where the female stylists will do their job topless, media reports said Tuesday.

Vitaly Milonov, a religiously conservative member of St. Petersburg's Legislative Assembly, said the salon's staff should seek psychiatric help, the Russian News Service reported.

The Creatif salon, whose website says it offers haircuts, shaves and erotic massages, is set to open this month in the city of Kemerovo.

The salon's young female staff will also share companionship, "listening attentively, giving advice and even spending time over a cup of tea," the website says.

But Milonov, whose anti-gay propaganda law became a basis for a national ban on teaching minors about homosexuality, reasoned that the hair salon's staff might have gone crazy — after drinking radioactive water from Chernobyl, 3,000 kilometers to the west.

"The Chernobyl sarcophagus was not sealed tight enough and allowed some water to leak out of the contamination zone … to Kemerovo. This group of people drank this water and lost their minds, and opened this filth [of a salon]," he was quoted as saying.

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