Another nude photo revolutionary for the Muslim world?

Maybe not. Pakistani model Veena Malik has filed suit against FHM India for using this cover photo, which she claims has been "morphed". The magazine says it has proof that the session was consensual and authentic.

And it's not just the nudity that's controversial, both in conservative India and Ms. Malik's home country. "ISI" is a reference to the Pakistani intelligence service.

According to The National Post:

[FHM India editor Kabeer] Sharma said the idea had been to take an ironic swipe at India’s obsession with the ISI. 

A tag line on the cover that points to the initials, reads: “Hand in the end of the world too?”
“People, especially young people in both countries, want to move past this kind of thinking,” the editor said. 

“It’s a very powerful picture — it took a lot of guts for her to do that. It shows a powerful, sexy woman not afraid to speak her mind.”

Speaking her mind, but then taking it back. Is this fear of backlash, or just a publicity stunt?

Either way, it's hard to compare it to Egyptian feminist blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy's not-for-profit and potentially deadly one woman online nude protest. (And note, with irony, the cover headline :Why naked protests are just amateur porn"!)

Putting nude models on the cover of a lad mag is hardly a step forward for feminism in Pakistan. But it does show that the global normalization of sexuality and nudity is affecting even very conservative cultures.

Lest we forget, Hugh Hefner started out not to pornify women, but to sexually liberate the repressed adults of the 1950s. Things went awry as Playboy outlasted the male-dominated society it grew out of, and today it is no better than its grandchildren publications such as FHM.

It's a dangerous road, to be sure, trying to sexually liberate women by sexualizing them. But will the end result mean a more sex-positive world? We'll see...

Tip and pics via Buzzfeed

F'd Ad Fridays: Watching adult virgins talk about sex is even more awkward than you would imagine

This is a trailer for "Virgin Diaries", a new reality show coming at you from TLC. The network claims it is not making fun of these poor saps. They leave that up to the viewers.






Via Jezebel

F'd Ad Fridays: Star Wars pin-up propaganda calendar

Photographer Joey DeMarco managed to combine an obsession with WWII recruitment posters, Star Wars, and tits in his unlicenced calendar on Etsy:

DeMarco ads, "Quantities are limited. Get them now before you-know-who slaps a Cease and Desist on me!"

Pretty cheesy stuff. However, the samples he posted include one epic mashup:

You can see all the Star Wars pin-ups here.

The Star Wars Trilogy as a burlesque routine

Star Wars Burlesque from Tenderloins on Vimeo.

Creative Director Russall Beattie told stuff.co.nz that his show combines "the greatest thing of being a kid with the greatest thing of being an adult".

"Slave Leia" burlesque wasn't a big stretch.

"Cameltoe Boba Fett." however...

Tip via Buzzfeed

F'd Ad Fridays: It's never too early to teach your daughter to whore

Jezebel reports that these thong underpants were part of the Kmart Girl Xpress line of clothing that markets itself to tweens in Australia:

They have since been taken of the shelves.

Stealth sex toys for women seem like a great idea, at first

Fashionista reports that adult toy manufacturer Screaming O has developed a line of intimate products designed to look like an ordinary makeup kit:

"Called the Studio Collection, the line includes a lipstick, makeup brush, and mascara, as well as two balms–one warming and one cooling–that look like eye shadow. The collection is rounded out by a “Sexy Secret Compact” containing an itty bitty little vibe hidden in a secret compartment. I sat at a table in a public restaurant viewing these products with company reps and can report that no one blinked an eye or looked at me in horror. They really look like makeup."

They mention the story of how one woman blogger had her privacy violated by TSA luggage inspectors who found a vibrator in her checked bag and left her a saucy note.

While these stealth items might avoid embarrassment when a woman accidentally dumps her purse, as a frequent flyer I would not recommend my female readers go through airport security with a mysterious electronic device cleverly hidden in a compact. Not unless you want to have a lot of 'splainin to do.

Killer jeans

As we get more and more saturated with sex and violence — both real and online — we apparently become harder to shock. So this long ad/short film for Australia's Billycock Denim & Co tries to lure us in with highly-sexualized psychopathy.



It's all very stylized and pretty average for the fashion industry. But will there come a point at which consumers won't want their denim brand associations to be about necrophilia and mass murder?

Dead sexy. (Ewwwwww!)

Via Illegal Advertising

Gap Kids sells sequined hooker shorts to tween and teen girls

PR Twitterer @woodlandalyssa shared a link to this item, from the Gap USA online catalogue:

Available only in sizes 12, 14 and 16, these "Sequined Party Shorts" have just a 2.5" inseam, putting them close to the realm of booty shorts.

Is this yet another horrible example of the fashion industry oversexualizing young girls?

Gap customers seem to think so. From the site comments:

Click to enlarge and read.

Cue the social media outrage in 3... 2...

Australia is now selling virgins online

The Telegraph reports that an australian escort agency has, among its various women for hire, a 19-year-old student who is offering her virginity for $15000.

And indeed, there it is:

Her nationality is given as Chinese, as well as these vitals:

• Name : MOC Virgin    
• Age : 19
• Body Size : 6
• Cup Size : B
• Height : 166
• Language : English, Mandarin
• Type : Student
• Speciality :Virgin
• Bookings : 15000/Virgin

The most disturbing part (if it can get any worse) is her "must sold by" date of 12/12.

Obviously, this is upsetting both to moralists and to human rights advocates.

The Australian Christian Lobby commented, "selling someone else's virginity takes the cause of women's liberation back centuries." And it does.

Anti-trafficking organization Brothel Busters representative Chris Seage says that he believes the woman is  in it willingly. "There is a sadly recurring theme among young Asian girls who come to Australia to study and work, and get themselves into debt. It is clear she is doing this because she needs the money urgently."

Apparently Australia has no laws against the offer to sell virginity, or that an agency would profit by it.

"This is pretty common in Sydney," said an anonymous spokesman from the escort service, adding that they already have two interested pigs perverts clients. She will get to keep about half of the price on her maidenhead.

"Alibis" fragrances cover the smell of baby powder, desperation

Copyranter posted this rather clever campaign for Mavericks, a South African strip club.

From the Mavericks blog:

"Mavericks Revue Bar, Cape Town’s premier Gentlemen’s Club, is extending its entertainment brand with a range of fragrances entitled ‘Alibis’, aimed at prividing gentlemen with ‘Alibis’ for a range of day to day situations.

The fragrances, aimed primarily at men are entitled:

‘My Car Broke Down’ with the scent of fuel, burnt rubber, grease and steel
‘We Were Out Sailing’ with the scent of fresh ocean spray, sea salt, aqua and cotton rope
‘I Was Working Late’ with the scent of coffee, wool suits, cigarettes and ink

All are available exclusively to purchase at Mavericks Revue Bar in Cape Town and will retail at ZAR 295 [$36.50 USD]."

I was rather surprised that the products are actually for sale. You'd think you could achieve the same marketing effect for the club without shelling out for risky novelty product development.

I can't really complain about the sexism or ethics of these ads, because those things kind of come with the territory in this entertainment category. But I do wonder if Alibis also makes a Tide-to-go-type glitter and skid mark remover for men's clothing.

F'd Ad Fridays: How would you advertise skateboard wheels to teenage boys?

Oh! Oh! I know. With porn?

Or maybe a little racist lesploitation? (I just made up this word today.)

Or perhaps a bad pun or two?

And some trash talk.

Thanks for turning me on to this brand, Steve Hall. It's just awful.

You can see the rest of the ads here.

F'd Ad Fridays: Tums keeps your food from giving you the Tony Danza treatment

Via Wikipedia

I really shouldn't know these things, but here it is: There's an urban legend that actor Tony Danza (of Taxi, or Who's The Boss, depending how old you are) started out as a porn star, and that his signature move was to slap his partner across the face with his manhood. That story lives on in adolescent online parlance as the "Danza Slap".

Stupid anecdote, eh? But now that you know it, you will not be able to watch these Tums ads with anything approaching a positive brand experience:







(That third slappee is NASCAR's Michael Waltrip.)

The Responsible Marketing Blog writes, "What the heck was Grey thinking in creating these spots? And more importantly, how could their client, Tums/GlaxoSmithKline, have approved them? What went wrong in the process for ads like these to get made? Or could the client possibly be that naïve and blind?"

F'd Ad Fridays: Danish energy booze hates your boobs

According to Adland, Danish energy drink/alcopop Cult Shaker has been shut down by Denmark's ad authority over an online contest that invited drunk and overstimulated fans to upload pictures of their breasts and be rated for winning free breast implants.

Shaker apparently has built its entire brand around showing nude female (and now male) torsos in its ads. Voting actually ended in the summer, but now the company has been forced to offer a cash equivalent instead of surgery. (They also offered free drinks to anyone willing to flash the bartender.)

What a weird contest. Not just the sexist exploitation, but also the idea of asking people to rate the breasts "most deserving" of enhancement. Not exactly a compliment, is it?

F'd Ad Fridays: Quickdraw condom

Wow! That was fast. (That's what she said.)

It's a pretty clever product, actually. But those snappy applicator hooks scare me.

Via Illegal Advertising

The disturbing adolescent world of Duke Nukem

Adland reports that this trailer for Duke Nukem Forever has been banned from British TV during primetime.



The ASA said, "In regard to the scenes of violence, the ASA admitted that the ad was not overly graphic for broadcast after 9pm. However, the ad watchdog said that the scenes showing "women's naked bodies and their very sexual movements and gyrations were overly sexually explicit" for airing at 9pm."

I'm not a gamer myself, but I try to keep up on pop culture. This game is a revival of the Duke Nukem character of the'90s, who was an over-the-top send up on action stars of the '80s, particularly Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

Whatever you think of the genre, as a teenage boy at that time it was lots of fun. The bad guys were cartoonish, and the good guys were tough and funny.

But the Nukem game added an extra pop culture element that was missing from those films: women as commoditized tits and ass as reward for the ero. For that, you had to go to sci fi fantasy sources like Heavy Metal.

It's hard to believe this guy was played by John Candy.

The game then combines two major instincts shared by many teenage boys — sex and violence. Nothing new there. The whole post-Vietnam war movie genre is based on the idea of bloodily annihilating scores of faceless, dehumanized foreigners. Sometimes that includes the real war activities of raping civilian women or else taking advantage of locals driven to prostitution.

"Me love you long time!" from Full Metal Jacket

The Duke Nukem world makes the awful human tragedy of warfare even more accessible to boys with somewhat of an undamaged moral compass. The dehumanized foreigners are truly inhuman—they're aliens. And instead of violating or paying women for sexual rewards, Duke enjoys free beer and shows from another professional class of sex worker — strippers.

One gamer has been helpful enough to record some of the "mature" highlights of the game and post them on YouTube:



In addition to the strippers, it has Duke getting hammered at the "club" and getting blown in a glory hole immediately after urinating (you actually thought that was a woman, Duke?) But don't worry, there's vicarious rape too, as the  lesbian incestuous twins kiss each other then get kidnapped, sexually assimilated, impregnated and exploded by the enemy.

Their last words? "We'll get the weight off, in like a week! We swear!"

Like I said before, I was a pubescent boy once too. And the over-the-top humour is obvious. But part of me hoped that the portrayals of men and women in popular youth media would get better, instead of worse, in 20 years. Fortunately, I believe most young het men are still capable of growing out of these ideas. Especially when they reach the maturity level where they are capable of interacting with real female humans.

Oh joy oh joy! A button museum!

I try to keep some of my nerdiness to myself, but I can't contain it any longer: I love vintage novelty buttons.

I used to have a great big collection of them (along with pop bottles, and sundry other crap) that I kept in a drawer. Now I'll have to go looking for them, because the Busy Beaver Button Co. has opened an online Button Museum to show off their own treasures.

I found out about this via Buzzfeed, where Buzzer Jesse McNulty posted a collection of buttons from the sexual revolution.

Here are some highlights:

Man oh man. The collection apparently covers all eras and messaging:

I wonder if they'd be interested in my "Junk Food Junkie" or "Ban The Leg-Hold Trap" classics...

The women of Mad Men as vintage Playboy covers

Fan art is such a weird part of internet culture. Thinking about the amount of time it must take to create something that will make the viral rounds for a few days and be promptly forgotten baffles me.

Case-in-point:

Joan in Playboy. Via Tauntr. It's astute, creative and brilliantly executed. After all, Christina Hendricks gets all the credit for bringing Marilyn-style voluptuousness back to the popular definition of beauty. This in itself is a cool piece of pop art that says all kinds of things about that era, as well as how far we really haven't come. Christina Hendricks continues to complain that all people ever talk about is her body, while also working it on the red carpet at every opportunity. This cover, and the look on her face, seem to sum up the conflict in real life, as well as on the show — where she often regrets the way she has used sex to be taken seriously by men. (Later addition: She also simultaneously reminds me of the Virgin Mary and a vampire.)

And then the artist messes up everything by bringing Betty and Trudy into it, just because they're attractive:

And why the hell isn't she "Miss January"?

Totally wrecked it, because now it's just about being hot in a '60s way. And where's Peggy? I guess she doesn't cut it.

And then, the artist throws a joke one in there:

Seriously, anonymous fan artist. You could have quit while you were ahead, instead of showing everyone that your masterpiece of artistic social commentary was just a fluke.

F'd Ad Fridays: Assholery of the week

This ad is from the so-called "Institute for Canadian Values" and it was placed in mainstream media in advance of the Ontario provincial election. It's a reaction to a proposed sex ed curriculum in public schools:

"Under the abandoned curriculum, Grade 1 students would have been taught the correct terms for body parts, including genitalia, which can help prevent sexual abuse.

But what sparked the ire of social conservatives was that Grade 3 students would have learned about homosexuality.

Sixth-graders would be taught about masturbation.

In Grade 7, concepts of anal and oral sex would have been introduced."

The Liberal government, if re-elected, has promised to do more "parent consultation" before proceeding.

The only confused people I see here are the advertisers, who are convinced that sexual orientation is a choice (and that someone would choose a path that would lead to being discriminated against by assholes like them).

Regardless, their ad has caused a lot of activity on social media, with this response from trans activist Chase Joynt:

Thanks to Marc for the tip.

UPDATE: The National Post has apologized for choosing to run the ad.

F'd Ad Fridays: Using technology to tell us what our instincts have forgotten?

This branded viral ad for Cosmo For Guys, featuring tiny hidden cameras to catch women checking out a fake hunky tourist's physical assets, has been making the rounds:



It's clearly inspired by the runaway hit "Rearview Girls", which was an initially unbranded Levi's jeans promo:



And, of course:



What I find strange about this is how much work we're putting into telling us the obvious. I mean, it's amusing and all. But it's also another example of how we use technology to accomplish tasks — like conversing, flirting, or knowing when we're being checked out — that used to just come naturally.

Arab world gets its first sexy magazine cover. But is this progress?

The Daily Mail reports that Lilac, a fashion magazine based in Israel but distributed to a broad Arab market in the Middle East, has decided to break taboos against showing female skin with this cover:

While it wouldn't get a second glance at the supermarket checkout in the West, this photo of 22-year-old model Huda Naccache would get you arrested in Saudi Arabia.

Lilac Editor in Chief Yara Mashou says it's all about women's rights.

"Since I established [Lilac] in Nazareth, Israel 10 years ago, I set out to break taboos regarding women in society... I worked on empowering and liberating [women].

...

I have been working for a decade on changing society so Arab women can have more rights and freedom in the Middle East."

The model herself, who comes from Haifa, had to struggle with her Christian Arab mores to take on the job:

"At the beginning, I was reluctant to appear on the cover in a bikini, because of concern to our society's norms.

...

Later I realised that if I want to be successful, I can't [sic] choose what I want, and I talked to my parents, who became convinced by my view. I would never do something without their blessing.

I consider myself to be bold and full of self confidence. I am not afraid to be the girl who takes the first step and opens the doors of opportunity to the other Arab models, to represent the liberal and independent young Arab woman."

I looked for conservative Muslim reaction to this, but I can't find any with my English Googling skills. Perhaps because the magazine is Israeli, and the model (who was also crowned Miss Israel Earth) is a Christian, it hasn't actually broken any serious taboos yet.

But religion aside, let's take the publisher's word for it, that this is a huge breakthrough. Is the objectification of a young model's body to sell magazines really social progress?

Where I live, some women's groups see these kinds of media images as our own form of sexual social oppression. The presumed typo in Huda's quote above, "Later I realised that if I want to be successful, I can't choose what I want" serves as a warning about the other side of the argument. Women choosing to exhibit and celebrate their physical sexuality is a wonderful freedom here; being coerced (subtly or otherwise) into doing so is an ongoing problem. Especially among the young.

Pushing the boundaries of women being able to own their sexual choices is important work in this part of the world. I'm just not sure that the fashion industry is the saviour they need.