Men’s Cosmetics Sales Booming
Cosmetics companies are using fresh-faced South Korean pop stars to fuel sales of their products to Asian men, who increasingly view appearance as a vital ingredient for success.
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Call Me Stormy
Finding righteous currents in turbulent times
Archive for the category “Sex Sells”
Odessa Girls
Odessa, on the frontier of the former Soviet Union, has become the seedy new tourist magnet for American men of all ages. The attraction: The city in the Ukraine has a seemingly endless supply of beautiful young, single women. Julia’s situation is typical of many. Following an abusive marriage, she signed up with one of the many local agencies that offer the chance to be paired up with hopefuls from abroad. “I’m already too old for the men here… Getting a man here is very competitive, because there are so few of them,” says Julia, living in a city where women outnumber men almost five to four.
But despite accusations of being little more than a legalized pimping service, clients such as Arthur, a 65 year-old veteran of six romance tours, have no qualms with the service they offer. “It’s like purchasing a very nice used Cadillac,” he explains. “I need to drive it before I make a decision about taking it home and putting it in my garage.” H/T Journeyman Pictures
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What a Way to Go!
Dixieland jazz bands wail at New Orleans funerals. Green activists are now clamoring to be buried in bio-degradable cardboard coffins. In Taiwan, another unusual funeral rite has become popular — strippers dancing for the dead, and consoling the living, by performing on movable Electric Flower Cars that join funeral processions en route to the graveyard.
This practice originated in rural districts of Taiwan, but has spurred more debate since appearing in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. Marc L. Moscowitz has now documented the phenomenon in a film called Dancing for the Dead: Funeral Strippers in Taiwan. He interviews academics, journalists, government officials and the strippers themselves to try to make sense of what’s at stake. Here is an excerpt.
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Let’s Measure Those Boobs
A Chinese beauty pageant has caused a ruckus by promoting some crazy new standards, including stipulating how far apart each contestants’ nipples should be. H/T SourceFed
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Naked in Times Square
Model Zoe West has won a $15,000 judgment against the City of New York after she claimed she was wrongfully arrested for staging a nude “body painting” performance in Times Square. She further charged that the police waited and watched the entire performance before hauling her off to the pokie. A judge ruled in her favor, upholding the legality of “artistic nudity” in NYC. H/T Next Media Animation, Taiwan
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Size Doesn’t Matter
Sex or travel? Your choice for a honeymoon…Israeli tourism marketing campaign aimed at the Canadian traveler.
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L.H.O.O.Q.
In 1919, the Surrealist Marcel Duchamp shocked the art world by drawing a mustache and beard on a cheap postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa, and then appending the title “L.H.O.O.Q.” The latter blasphemy was a wicked pun, meant to evoke the French expression, “Elle a chaud au cul,” which translates as “She has a hot ass.”
Now, a Buenos Aires advertising agency has combined some larger-than-life Surrealist imagery with the everyday fantasy of making like Chuck Norris and kicking some serious ass. It might sound like a recipe for disaster or deviancy, but happiness ensues, and it’s all for a good cause — to market Diesel sneakers. H/T culturepub
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