Dorkly shared this made-for-viral video for BUYMA, a Japanese fashion brand.
According to Spoon & Tomago, it was created by Dentsu and creative director Takashi Sakuma. It was aired on Japanese television only once, on December 13, 2015.
The beauty of the human body in movement meets the choreography of drones. You've got to admit: It's pretty cool. Just watch out for those blades!
So, to show people that this new product has real dairy in it, they body-painted "nude" baristas (and a few customers) in a coffee shop in what looks to be an experiential stunt:
"Boobs," get it? Natural dairy. Ha ha. But at least they involved men as well in this gag. They even made a point of sexually objectifying the guy more bluntly, although this is hardly progressive.
It's not that bold of an idea, though. Topless coffee bars were a fad out west a few years ago, and public nude body painting stunts go back decades.
But then again, advertising ain't art. It's about getting attention and triggering recall. This ad achieves the former, and might achieve the latter if people can forget a lifetime of associations between Coffee-Mate and unnatural coffee whiteners.
It's also a very American brand ad, which takes full advantage of that country's weird relationship with nudity. As many celebrities' Instagram drama has shown, nude buttocks are perfectly acceptable to the American general public, while women's nipples are not. Take a closer look at the video, and you'll note that not only are the "nude" actors wearing thongs, but the women are oddly nipple-less while the men are not.
It's the same thing that you see on TV, with shows like Naked and Afraid — lots of tease with nude bodies from the rear, with all genitals and female nipples blurred out. Considering all of the real nudity on the internet, this PG sexuality is simultaneously exploitative and bland. In other words, not really "natural" at all.
My Night With Reg is a 1994 play about gay men in London during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. This poster, for the current revival revived at the Donmar Warehouse (and now the Apollo Theatre) was rejected by Transport for London for "male nudity," according to Pink News.
In the past, Transport for London has been the subject of ridicule for its prudish advertising standards, once banning a poster for an exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts for showing a 16th century female nude by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
It's been a while since I've written about Femen, the Ukrainian-born topless protest group that has since gone global. But this tee, just Tweeted, and on sale at their web site, seemed timely.
Considering that the group considers their bare breasts "weapons" in the war against misogyny, creating a clothed toplessness raises some questions: Is this self-aware parody? Commoditization of their tactics for fundraising? Or just a more accessible form of solidarity for shy women (and flat-chested men)?
There's another version of the shirt that reads, "Every Woman is a Riot" in reference to Pussy Riot - the allied Russian punk protest band that won the world's support when some members were jailed.
As much as I complain about sex in advertising, it's not because I'm "anti-sex." What I am is anti-contributing-to-women-being-commoditized and anti-lazy-creative.
This ad, for a fashion shopping app, is pretty tasteful in its sexualization of both male and female models, and the insight is pretty clever. Using the pixelization we're used to seeing on the naughty bits, it tells us that it's the clothes that their customers really get off on:
It was actually kind of refreshing for a sexy ad, wasn't it?
The Vagenda shared this series of images, scanned from the pages of the Evening Standard’s Deluxe Magazine.
Here's their commentary:
Once I’d got over the slight amusement at the idea that we should ‘bare all to show off the season’s most luxurious accessories’ (that’s right ladies, when you spend that much on a handbag the best way to wear it is in the buff!) I was left quite freaked out by these images. The body in the spread has been so dehumanised through the lack of face in any of the shots, and through the positioning of the body as a prop, that it resembles a piece of furniture. This woman's body has been objectified to the point that it’s no longer the object of the photograph, rather a nice background to draw the eye to a ridiculously expensive bag.
I don't have much more to add, except that it is all painfully pretentious.
Selling products with calendars featuring nude, or otherwise sexualized, women is a very old tactic. Dating back to the "pin-up girls" of the mid-20th century, nudie calendars typically sold products aimed at men, and were displayed in male spaces: garages, workshops, etc. (Even my mild-mannered grandfather had one up in the office of the lumber mill where he worked.)
With the fifth edition of Lindner Calendar we come back to nature, which we express with perfect harmony between Lindner coffins and natural wood, blue sea, red flowers, green fields and beauty of the female body.
Fifth edition? I guess there's quite a demand for softcore coffin porn. Like Pirelli tires, Lindner seems to be better known for its calendars than the actual product. Their calendars even have their own web site, which is much better designed than their corporate one, and is available in three languages.
The first edition, from 2010, features women clothed in fetish outfits, but without nudity. 2011 saw the introduction of weird and violent scenarios. By 2012 the clothes were gone, replaced by body paint. It only got nakeder from there.
Now there's even a "making of" video:
Now it can be said there's no limit to what people will try to sell by commoditizing women's sexuality. Sports Illustrated, watch your back...
According to the evolution of public lice, humans and our ancestors have been wearing some sort of clothing for up to 3.3 million years. But this mythological reimagining of the dawn of pants is a little less icky.
I didn't count them, but prepare yourself for a multitude of swinging penises. And twice as many bared breasts. (Although I suspect some of the women in the ad concealed their nether parts behind merkins.)
The short film, called "Studies On Hysteria", is sponsored content for Colorado Denim. It was a project by three German student directors, Matthias Bäuerle, Gabriel Borgetto, Bernd Faaß, from Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.
It was shot at two open-air museums, which presented some logistical problems, according to this interview:
Since we were shooting with a naked cast, the managers of the museum didn’t want us to interfere with the school classes visiting on a daily basis. Hence, we could only shoot outside in the early morning and in the late afternoon when the museum was closed. However, due to a timing mistake, we were still shooting when the first grade school class passed by our set. I think they weren’t shocked too much, but the teachers wanted to call the cops… Fortunately they didn’t see us shooting the scene in the church.
The actors, apparently, are mostly real-life nudists who were recruited from online naturist communities. And I think that's why this thing ends up being entirely OK in my book. The nudity is equal, it's natural, and it's funny.
If I was just in this for the money, I'd consider opening up an ad agency that specializes in things that offend people, like this:
Really, what's the point in bothering with things like research, strategy and creativity, when you can just put a half-dressed woman in an awkwardly-sexualized context and have men leer at her?
In this case, Innerware, an Australian lingerie retailer, managed to do it in a way that upset prudes and feminists alike.
It disgusted me and it is degrading to women. I thought it was an ad for the sex industry when I first saw it.
I feel the ad represents low level porn. This ad offends me because the purpose is to advertise women's lingerie, not to objectify women and promote attention by strange men as the main goal of wearing lingerie. This is demeaning to a lot of women. The ad is more aimed at men than women, yet it is advertising a product made for women.
It objectifies women and makes them out to be a piece of meat. it doesn't actually sell the lingerie at all only the fact that men want to service you. It's filth!!!
And here is the advertiser's response:
The concept is intended to be quirky and tongue in cheek. In no way was there any intention to discriminate against, objectify, exploit or degrade women. Innerware is a retailer of ladies underwear and the actress was wearing their product.
The woman is portrayed as being very confident and in control. In absolutely no way is she undermined by the males in the ad. Her attire, although revealing, is classy and covers all genitalia. There is no nudity in this ad.
"All genitalia"? Are there new genital parts of which I was not aware?
The "she's in control" argument is an old one, but it never seems to go away. Nonetheless, this pointless ad did what it set out to do — get the brand talked about.
And interestingly, the ASA bought the advertiser's rationale and found the ad neither "objectification," "exploitative," nor "degrading":
The Board noted that the product advertised is lingerie and considered that whilst a depiction of a woman in lingerie is not of itself exploitative and/or degrading in the Board's view the depiction of a woman in her lingerie asking a tyre fitter if he can "fit" her is a purposeful use of her sexual appeal to attract the attention of the viewer to the product being advertised. The Board noted that the woman deliberately dressed in a manner that will attract the attention of the employees of the workshop and that she appears to be enjoying the attention of the men who work there. The Board considered that although the advertisement does use sexual appeal, it is not portrayed in a manner that is exploitative and degrading to women.
Instead, they banned the ad because of "sexualisation":
However the Board considered that the advertisement did have a strong sexual suggestion with the combination of the woman wearing lingerie, her sexualised strutting, the focus on her body and the sexualised conversation. In the Board‟s view the level of sexualisation was not sensitive even to an M [mature audiences only] classification. Based on the above the Board considered that the advertisement depicted images which did not treat the issue of sex, sexuality and nudity with sensitivity to the relevant audience and determined that the advertisement did breach Section 2.4 of the Code.
So sexism is just dandy on Australian TV, but there's something wrong with "bein' sexy".
Despite what you may have heard on the internet, these images are not for any of the upcoming Milk Calendars produced by dairy farmers' organizations. They're part of a series of "Milky Pinups" by photographer Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz.
aurumlight.com
Mr. Wieczorkiewicz is somewhat of a specialist in liquid effects, which he teaches in a touring workshop. Of this series, he says "This time I thought it will be cool to approach the liquid theme in a more relaxed and funny way. So we threw some colours into the mix and came up with a personal Milky PinUp tribute to my favourites pinup style artists."
Most of the reference pin-ups are by Gil Elvgren, who was a master of the genre. Whether these interpretations, with their biologically-correct yet somehow unsettling combination of breasts and milk, are great homage, technically interesting, sexually objectifying or just plain weird... is up to you. But there will be a 2014 calendar. Just not an industry-sponsored one.
Thanks to Ivan for sharing Behance coverage of this.
How many times have we seen links like this? It's kind of what you'd expect from a site called "College Humor".
Here's the same link from the main page of their site:
Same old, same old, eh? A little internet T&A to get you through your day. As The Onion brilliantly pointed out, even CNN is in the sexual voyeurism business now.
I'm trying to figure out how someone thought this was sexy: "Oh yeah, the broccoli floret kind of looks like green shag carpet. We can have Patricia de Leon get all 'come hither' on it! Hawt!"
Not.
UPDATE: Tania pointed out that Ms. de Leon is also missing a leg.
Having scantily clad women serve drive through coffee in the middle of winter is apparently a thing in the State of Washington. Grab-N-Go is one of these things, offering "entertainment with surprisingly superb tasting espresso".
Last Wednesday, Grab-N-Go made the local news in Everett, Washington, for the arrest of three baristas for "exhibition and exposure". According to police, the women (one of whom is only 16) were offering customers even more exposed views of their bodies for cash.
This isn't the first time women at the coffee stand chain have been accused of crossing the line between exploiting their sexuality to sell coffee and actual sex work. In 2009, five different baristas were charged with stripping, allowing customers to touch them, and "whip cream shows".
In a bizarre case, the owner of the chain, Bill Wheeler, went missing in Las Vegas a few months later. His family fought over the business and his son, Bill D. Wheeler Jr., eventually took over.
Like his father before him, Bill Jr. denies any wrongdoing. He told local media that he enforces strict policies for his six baristas, including no drug use, no flashing, and no personal visitors at the stands.
"They have to be dressed a certain way," he said. "Their crotch has to be covered up. They can't expose their areolas."
On his company Facebook page, however, he was a little more defiant:
We feel this incident is a publicity stunt by the Everett PD for unjustifiable reasons.
Our policy and procedures strictly state any employee engaging in lewd or inappropriate behavior will be terminated. We also have a zero tolerance policy for drug's as well.
As always when it comes to any government agency question everything. We also thank all of our customers for there support and the Everett policy [police?] department for the free press in yet another waste of our tax payers money.
Free press, indeed. The article went international within a couple of days. Do a Google News search for "Grab-N-Go" and you'll get a bunch of mainstream media hits with headlines like "Busty Baristas Busted" with lots and lots of pictures.
It's a sleazy business operator's dream. Nobody can resist a story about sex, especially when young women are involved. (Yes, I know I am part of the problem here, no matter what I think my intentions are.)
But you have to wonder how much the owner of the business is responsible for the actions of the employees, policy or not, when he promotes his business like this:
Via Facebook
And sells merch like this:
Via Grab-N-Go
Sleazy or not, the Grab-N-Go owner may have a point about the timing of the arrests being a bit of a conspiracy. According to the Seattle Times, the 2009 arrests came on the same day as a public hearing was scheduled on a proposed update to Everett's lewd-conduct ordinance "which would declare drive-up windows a public place, making it illegal for someone to expose their breasts and genitals." While it's understandable that citizens don't want to accidentally see live sex shows at public coffee stands, the obsessive American War On Breasts seems to be complicating the issue.
Via Facebook
The current Everett Municipal Code actually mentions drive-through windows specifically. I'm exerpting it at length because it's kind of interesting.
A. A “lewd act” is: 1. An exposure of one’s genitals, anus, or any portion of the areola or nipple of the female breast; or 2. The touching, caressing or fondling of the genitals or female breasts; or 3. Masturbation; or 4. Sexual conduct. B. “Public place” means an area generally visible to public view, and includes streets, sidewalks, bridges, alleys, plazas, parks, driveways, parking lots, automobiles (whether moving or not), and buildings open to the general public, including those which serve food or drink or provide entertainment, and the doorways and entrances to buildings or dwellings and the grounds enclosing them, and businesses contained in structures which can serve customers who remain in their vehicles, by means of a drive-up window. C. “Sexual conduct” means sexual intercourse or any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person done for the purpose of gratifying sexual desire of either party, whether such persons are the same or opposite sex. D. For purposes of this chapter, any activity is obscene: 1. Which the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, when considered as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; and 2. Which explicitly depicts or describes patently offensive representations or descriptions of: a. Ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated; or b. Masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus, bestiality, excretory functions or lewd exhibition of the genitals or genital area; or c. Violent or destructive sexual acts including but not limited to human or animal mutilation, dismemberment, rape or torture; and 3. Which, when considered as a whole, and in the context in which it is used, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. For purposes of this chapter, an activity is dramatic if the activity is of, relating to, devoted to, or concerned specifically or professionally with current drama or the contemporary theater.
10.24.020 Lewd conduct. A. A person is guilty of lewd conduct if he or she intentionally performs any lewd act in a public place or under circumstances where such act is likely to be observed by any member of the public. The act of breastfeeding or expressing breast milk is not lewd conduct.
I'm no lawyer, but I'm assuming the parts I bolded are why the baristas are being charged under "Soliciting for a lewd act": Every person who solicits another to engage in a lewd act in a public place shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
If I had a business like this, I suppose I'd feel targeted too. (Not to mention feeling like I really needed a shower.)
But then again, considering the target market, you just can't buy this kind of publicity:
Everyone knows European ads show lots of bare breasts. But these are the weirdest ones I've seen in some time. Created by Marcel Paris and Publicis Espana for Valege Lingerie they show anthropomorphized boobs having a bunch of squishy reunions:
According to AdFreak, the ads were directed by "J.A.C.K." of Wanda Productions. They're certainly playful, but humanizing the "breast friends" creates all kinds of weirdness — especially with the nipple "squint" in the airport ad.
It's pretty harmless, and very French. Although as AdFreak's Tim Nudd points out, "It's not generally assumed that breasts enjoy being squashed together in a push-up bra."
Here's how it appears on Apple's iTunes site and app:
That's right. Censored for your safety.
It's not the first time. When I bought Daniel Lanois' second solo album from iTunes, they used the "American" version of the cover with the famous Jan Saudek nude's nipples covered by lettering.
Oddly, however, if you go back and look for other famously banned/censored album covers, iTunes is not so prudish.
Even last year's Bat For Lashes release gets to go au naturel:
Granted, the Blind Faith album with the topless adolescent girl is not even on iTunes, and Virgin Killer by The Scorpions uses the non-creepy version of the cover. But what the hell, Apple? Why are you so concerned about some examples of artsy nudity and not some others?
BONUS: This ad has been following me around the internets all day, mocking me:
The T-bars are history, read these ads for Norwegian skiers. And if I had ever experienced this kind of discomfort, these ads would have my full attention.
Equal-opportunity nudity done with strategy and humour. I approve.
This time, however, they've gone full monty. And in wintry Stockholm, of all places.
(NUDITY IN VIDEO)
From their media release:
Today in the snowbound Stockholm the world has seen apocalyptic picture.
International women's movement FEMEN and antiislamist Egyptian activist Alia al-Mahdi have called to say NO to Sharia constitution in Egypt! Before the decisive day of the referendum in Egypt activists came to the Embassy of Egypt in Stockholm to support Egyptian heroes who are resisting the sharia-dictatorial draft of the constitution of the president Morsi. FEMEN calls people of Great Egypt to deny this religious bondage of newly appeared prophet Morsi and to give the chance for Egypt for the rightful democratic development.
"Sharia is not a constitution" - it has been written on Alia's naked body. Her genitals have been covered by the poster shaped like Koran. The three posters in the hands of activists are the symbolic religious books. In that way FEMEN warns the world about the danger of the transformation secular constitution into religious. FEMEN warns muslim brother Morsi, if he gave an orders to shoot at his own people then his last resting will be the Nile with crocodiles, not the pyramids.
Fuck off religious slavery! Viva freedom and human rights!
Both Femen and Ms. Elmahdy (the transcribed version of her name varies) have become polarizing figures in the women's movement. Some see them as shock tacticians who are exploiting their own sexuality for attention. Others (myself included) see them as activists who are acting out of desperation, using their bodies as weapons in their respective, extremely sexist, cultures. Their message is, "men think they own this — but it is mine to do with what I please."
Femen has been getting more extreme of late, lashing out against organized religion in their homeland. As a result of legal troubles, they recently moved some of their operations to Paris. I'm just happy to see them all somewhat safer in Western Europe.
Don't worry. It's not the latest random sex in unrelated advertising.
It is, as David St. Hubbins would say, "making fun of that sort of thing."
The work is by British artist Katerina Jebb, for an exhibition titled" Simulacrum & Hyperbole "
This film of Australian singer/actress Kylie Minogue (whose videos tend to be highly sexualized) was created for an imaginary TV channel called Lucid TV Paris.
Here's an explanation from the official release (which won't let me embed, which is why I used that crude rip above):
In this work ,Jebb sees the boundaries between actuality and satire confused and disrupted.
In creating an imaginary TV channel, the viewer is offered parody endorsements such as Life Eraser , a new life enhancing beauty cream with the face of Tilda Swinton .
Beautiful and disturbing , the ad infinitum series will launch officially on the Lucid TV Paris Channel in 2013
I've been observing the latest campaign by Ottawa classic rock radio station The Bear for a few months now. Originally, it showed billboards with two bare-backed women and a hairy bare-backed man, the women with band names tattooed on their skin and the guy with one shaved in. It was stupid, but mostly harmless.
Then I guess they decided to drop the humour, and go straight to the sex:
You can't really expect sensitivity and brilliance from ads aimed at aging Gen-X and Boomer male wannabe rockers. I'm in that market, after all. But I still found it pretty primitive of them.
The use of the Nirvana "brand" however, made me think of the late Kurt Cobain. Wasn't he supposed to have been a feminist hero?
Female fans detected a humanistic view of women in the lyrics and certainly in Cobain’s public pro-feminist persona. Cobain was an early advocate of Sassy magazine, the late '80s through mid-'90s magazine aimed at teenage girls that had a definite feminist bent. He also enjoyed provoking and mocking American gender anxieties, engaging in previously unheard of behavior in a major rock star—glam rock aside—such as wearing women’s clothes and making out with male bandmates in public, just daring people to have a problem with it. “I really picked up on the sensitivity and girl-positive nature of Nirvana,” explained Kate, a 30-year-old from Toronto, “it was important to me to see a famous, attractive man share some ideas about feminism with me and be unapologetic and forthright about it.”
“Yeah, all Isms (sic) feed off one another but at the top of the food chain is still the white, corporate, macho, strong ox male. Not redeemable as far as I’m concerned. I mean, classism is determined by sexism because the male decides whether all other isms still exists (sic). Its up to men. I’m just saying that people can’t deny any ism or think that some are more or less subordinate except for sexism… I still think that in order to expand on all other isms, sexism has to be blown wide open…but there are thousands of green minds, young gullable (sic) 15 year old boys out there just starting to fall into the grain of what they’ve been told of what a man is supposed to be and there are plenty of tools to use. The most effective tool is entertainment”
And now, 18 years after he killed himself, the band he founded is being used as part of a campaign telling the new generation what a woman is "supposed to be": pure T&A, sexually available and enjoying his gaze.
It's only rock and roll, right? Except it's not the '70s anymore. Unironic, unartistic, sexually exploitative marketing. Weren't we supposed to grow out of this?
The idea of founding our own spirit label was born in our time as barkeepers in a cocktail bar.
Even in those days we only worked with the best spirits to achieve an optimal taste adventure. With age our experience and aspiration increased. However, we noticed quickly that it's not just the taste which makes you enjoy a drink fully. Good flavour is the basis, the conveying feeling, the highlight. Because of our great interest in the best spirits, we came across a Vodka, filtered above diamonds. A nice idea to convey the feeling. However, for us there is nothing more than the erotism of a beautiful woman. To create the perfect taste we let every single drop of our spirits run over the breasts of a special type of woman, a type we recognize in this liquor.This sensuality awakens the true character of our brands and gives them an identity, a soul, a spirit, a G-Spirit.
Click here to see the rather porny "trailer" video that introduces you to the models and their breasts.
Is it true that the whole content of the bottle run over the breasts of the model?
G-Spirits: Yes, indeed! It´s not just a marketing gag.
I guess it depends on your definition of "gag." The company makes rum, whisky and vodka, all of which have run over a woman's bare chest.
The first G-Spirit collection is limited to 5000 bottles per variety, so 2500 liters run over the breasts of the model?
G-Spirits: No, 2500 liters all at once are too much. We produce smaller quantities, on demand we make new appointments with our models.
The German company doesn't seem to see any problem with the extreme sexual objectification or the odd fetishes involved in their product. Me, I don't even know where to start...
