Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Secret opt-out clause for junk mail

The Royal Mail have sacked a postman for delivering a leaflet on his round telling residents about a secretive opt-out clause which allows you to opt out of receiving anonymous advertising material. There is no mention of this facility anywhere on the royal mail website although they do tell you about the mailing preference service but this will not stop the anonymous "door to door" leaflets. Apparently the royal mail plan to increase the amount of anonymous advertising material which they deliver.

So if you want to avoid being deluged by an avalanche of junk mail I would suggest that you contact The Royal Mail and find out about this opt-out clause. Apparently you can ring them on 08457 740 740 to arrange to opt-out.

If you email optout@royalmail.com then they will send you a form to complete.

The Royal Mail are trying to use the excuse that if you opt-out of receiving junk leaflets then you won't get important government and council circulars.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Objectionable Body Hair


Before 1915 most women did not shave their armpits. However in 1915 an advert appeared in Harpers Bazaar which would change all that. The advert featured a young woman in a sleeveless dress with shaven armpits.

The advert encouraged women to remove their "objectionable" body hair.

"Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair."

Both Wilkinson and Gilette quickly began campaigns to encourage this notion that women's body hair needed to be removed. In 1915, Gillette introduced Milady Décolletée, a razor created especially for women. Within two years sales of razors had doubled.

Now it is the norm within western society for women to shave not only their armpits but also their legs. Within the last few years there has also been a tendency towards shaving of the pubic hair.

The western world is full of images of half-naked women but none of these women have any body hair. The only women we see are completely smooth and hair free.

Anyone who dares to break this taboo will be villified by all and sunder. Julia Robert's appearance with armpit hair at a film premiere in London sparked an outcry. Any female celebrity who dares to appear unshaven is certain to be villified by the press and general public.



Within 100 years the power of advertising has created an environment where the display of any female body hair is practically taboo. The hair removal industry is big business, women in the UK spent 250 million pounds in 2005 on removing their body hair. Certainly it explains why hair removal companies will continue to relentlessly promote the image of hairless women.

This whole industry depends on women disliking their own bodies and they fill our television screens and magazines with silky smooth legs and shaven armpits. The power of advertising has turned what is in fact abnormal (removing all your body hair) into normal. Our society has been conditioned to view female body hair as abnormal and objectionable.

The hair removal industry have really played a trick on women!

Monday, August 21, 2006

WH Smiths Hypocrisy

WH Smiths place all gay lifestyle magazines on the top shelf even when these magazines contain no bare flesh or sexual imagery. Yet WH Smith openly sell a whole range of lads magazines which feature women in very sexually provocative poses.

WH Smith respect the male body and yet treats the female body with complete and utter contempt. This is total hypocrisy on WH Smith's part.

A Real Woman's Body

I came across a wonderful site which contains lots of real photographs of mothers. It highlights how a woman's body changes during pregnancy. It is amazing that in this world which contains millions of images of womens bodies that we never see images like this of real women.

The media is not interested in portraying what real women look like. The media just portrays a one-sided sexualised view of a woman.

You must visit this site just to see some images of real women.
http://www.shapeofamother.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Women in Comedy

Whilst channel-hopping on sunday evening I happened upon a programme about women comedians. It is becoming increasingly rare to find a TV programme on after 9pm which is not an excuse for soft-porn, so I was shocked to find a programme featuring funny but fully clothed women comedians and not jumped-up glamour models.

What has the world gone mad! I thought that the watershed meant that only DD silcone enhanced glamour models were allowed on TV.

Well the BBC have just started a new series on Sundays at 10.15 pm on BBC One. Dawn French's Girls Who Do Comedy features the wonderfully funny Dawn French interviewing women comedians. Two more episodes are still to be shown over the next two sundays. This will definitely be on my watch list.

BBC Four will also be showing some of the interviews in full.

  • Whoopi Goldberg - Wed 20 September 10.00pm-10.30pm
  • Catherine Tate - Wed 27 September 10.00pm-10.30pm
  • Kathy Burke - Wed 4 October 10.00pm-10.30pm
  • Julie Walters - Wed 11 October 10.00pm-10.30pm
  • Victoria Wood - Wed 18 October 10.00pm-10.30pm
  • Joan Rivers - Wed 25 October 10.00pm-10.30pm

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

A Day in The Life of a Porn King

I have just read an article about the "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis. It is frankly quite disturbing. LA Times Journalist Claire Hoffman reports on her day spent with Joe Francis.

"He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He's pushing himself against me, shouting: "This is what they did to me in Panama City!"

If this is how this man treats a 29 year old professional journalist then how does he treat the drunken 17 year old girls who feature in his videos.

"This much is certain: He's got at least 80 pounds on me and I'm thinking he's about to break my left arm. My eyes start to stream tears."

Thankfully Claire manages to free herself and punches Joe Francis in the face.

Joe Francis has made a fortune from the "Girls Gone Wild" video series which features drunken girls flashing their breasts or french-kissing their girlfriends outside nightclubs across the USA. This business is worth 40 million dollars a year in sales. But Joe has even bigger plans and he wants to move mainstream and create a lifestyle brand which will be used to sell clothes, food, holidays etc.

If so then it is quite probable that "Girls Gone Wild" merchandise such as stationery, bedding and watches will soon be for sale in Argos and WH Smith. The "Girls Gone Wild" concept is an appealing business proposition. Drunken seventeen or eighteen year old girls can be quite willing to flash their breasts in exchange for a t-shirt or the vague possibility of being spotted and becoming famous. The business essentially has a plentiful supply of free labour. Many of those interviewed by Claire enjoy the experience:

Jillian Vangeertry, a 21-year-old student:
"Anybody enjoys the attention. T-shirts, hats—we got all the accessories," she says. I ask if she plans on going wild for the cameras later. She shrugs. "If you do it, you do it," she says confidently. "You can't complain later. It's almost like your 15 minutes of fame."

Kaitlyn Bultema:
"If you do this, you might get noticed by somebody—to be an actress or a model."

Certainly there is nothing illegal in any of this at all. However the concept of grown men hanging around nightclubs waiting for drunken seventeen year old girls who can be lured to the bedroom in the "Girls Gone Wild" bus to reveal all is distinctly sordid.

The story of eighteen year old Jannel Szyszka's encounter with Joe Francis highlights the inherent dangers when adult men deliberately seek out drunken teenagers. (WARNING: DISTURBING CONTENT)

Szyszka tells me later that as she was spinning around the strip pole that night, Francis appeared, grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him. "You are so going on the bus later," she recalls Francis saying. "I was like, 'Um, OK.' I was shocked. I was like, 'Whoa—Joe's, like, trying to talk to me, like out of all the girls in here.'" Francis invited her back to the VIP area to do shots with him, she says, and she said yes.



Szyszka says the more shots she drank, the cloudier her judgment became. She says she agreed to join Francis and his crew on the "Girls Gone Wild" bus. "I thought 'Girls Gone Wild' was like flashing, and I thought I would flash them and be done. And so when I'm walking to the bus, that's all I'm thinking is going to happen."



At first she felt comfortable, she says. Inebriated and excited, she says she was led to the back of the bus, to a small bedroom. The double bed, with its neatly folded iridescent purple sheets, takes up most of the room. A flat-screen TV faces the bed, and cabinets are filled with remote controls, lubricants, condoms, sex toys in plastic bags, baby oil, a DVD called "How to be a Player" and a clipboard full of waivers for girls to sign. A small bathroom is off to the side, with a half-sized shower with faux marble tiling, and on the floor of the shower is a crate holding cheap and fruity-flavored rum, whiskey, tequila and Kool-Aid.



Footage from that night shows a close-up of Szyszka's driver's license, proving she's not a minor. The camera then captures Szyszka lying on the bed. Her nails are chipped, her eyes coated with makeup. Following a camerman's instructions, she shows her breasts and says, "Girls Gone Wild." She seems shy but willing. She smiles. The unseen cameraman asks her to take off her shirt, her skirt, then her underwear. She sprawls on the bed, her legs open. At his suggestion, she masturbates with a dildo, saying repeatedly that it hurts but also feels good. Francis enters the room at certain points and you hear his voice, low and flirtatious, telling her, "You are so adorable." When she says she's a virgin, he responds: "Great. You won't be after my cameraman gets done with you."



When I talk to Szyszka seven days later, she says she "didn't quite realize" she was being filmed. "But I didn't care because I was drunk and who cares?" Then she adds: "It didn't feel good to me at all, but I was totally faking it because I was on 'Girls Gone Wild.'"



Eventually, Szyszka says, Francis told the cameraman to leave and pushed her back on the bed, undid his jeans and climbed on top of her. "I told him it hurt, and he kept doing it. And I keep telling him it hurts. I said, 'No' twice in the beginning, and during I started saying, 'Oh, my god, it hurts.' I kept telling him it hurt, but he kept going, and he said he was sorry but kissed me so I wouldn't keep talking.



Afterward, she says, Francis cleaned them both off with a paper towel and told her to get dressed. Then, she says, he opened the door and told the cameraman to come back, saying, "She's not a virgin anymore".



Szyszka says Francis told her that what happened had to stay between them. She says she agreed, and they walked to the front of the bus. Szyszka remembers that one of the crew returned her driver's license. Another asked if she wanted to hang out on the bus. She declined, she says, but asked for three pairs of "booty short" underwear that Francis had promised her for appearing on camera. "They gave me a weird look like that was too much," Szyszka recalls. "They were, like, 'Three of them?' and I was, like, 'Yeah, three.'"



Within days, Szyszka says, she told her father, who was angry about what she said had happened but kept quiet at her request. A month after the incident, she says, she told her sister and mother.



She's confused, she admits, about what happened. She feels guilty, she says, for getting herself into the situation in the first place. She says she never would have undressed for the cameras if she hadn't been completely drunk. And she is adamant that she said "no" to Francis. She says she's haunted by that night.



"I feel like it was planned," she says. "Sometimes I'm driving along, and I think about it and all of a sudden feel weird."


Six weeks later and Claire rings Joe Francis about the incident. He denies that he had sex with anyone that night.

"If you print that, I will [expletive] sue the [expletive] out of you. If you print that, baby, you just put the nail in your own coffin," he tells me. "You are a [expletive expletive]. You decided to blast me . . . You are a [expletive] bitch . . . I will get my last laugh on you. I will get you."

His lawyer later confirms in an email that Francis and Szyszka has consensual sex.

The full article is in The LA Times.

Not a newspaper but a porn paper



It is incredulous that The Daily Star is for sale on newstands across the country. The Daily Star is not a newspaper. It is soft porn and needs to placed on the top shelf.

The retail industry have failed to regulate themselves and government regulation is needed. The Daily Star has been on newagents shelves in the UK since 1978. Both Labour and Tory governments have had many years to deal with this issue yet neither of them choose to do anything about this. Why is it left to Claire Curtis-Thomas one woman MP to bring her own private member bill under the ten minute rule? Realistically her Sexually Explicit Material (Regulation of Sale and Display) Bill has little chance of becoming law because of lack of parliamentary time!

The politicians have been ignoring this since 1978 and continue to let the profits of porn peddlers take precedence. Politicians have given newspapers and magazines a license to do what they want with womens bodies.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Breasts Uncovered

Bare breasts are part of a British tradition started by The Sun's Page Three in 1969. In recent years publications such as The Daily Sport and the lads mags have joined in the fun. Now retailers across the nation have a bevy of breasts on display. Apparently bare breasts are now part of a great british tradition started by saucy postcards from Blackpool.

Yet a mother in Boston (UK) is forced to breastfeed her baby in public toilets due to public attitudes towards breast-feeding and a lack of breast-feeding facilties.

"I wouldn't mind doing it in public, but some people think it's disgusting and give you funny looks. But what are you supposed to do?"

It is a very strange world when a mother can't breastfeed her baby in public yet three and half million people buy The Sun every day. If you walk into any newsagent or supermarket you will find plenty of practically naked women in sexually provocative poses on the covers of both lads magazines and national newspapers.

Yet the british public cannot accept a mother breast feeding her baby. The message is clear in our society uncovered breasts are certainly acceptable for public consumption but only if they titillate.

http://www.bostontoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=756&ArticleID=1677938

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Trinny "lets the side down"

I'm completely gobmacked by an article I have just come across in The Daily Mail. The female writer lambasts Trinny Woodall for appearing "Au Naturel"- this is code for hairy armpits.

Apparently this is the most heinous of sartorial crimes. The writer subjects Trinny to a tirade of abuse and accuses her of being lazy and slut-like. Trinny looked pretty stylish to me . Women have hairy armpits. It is a fact that grown women have body hair though if you look at the multitude of media images of women which surround us on a daily basis you would not realise this. It is refreshing that someone like Trinny can show the world that women do indeed have body hair.

However it does seem that even this writer does recognise that there is something deeply wrong with our society's expectation that women have no body hair.

"Now we even have the Hollywood wax, where no hair at all is left behind, a trend that follows the fashion diktat that women should all look 12 years old."

Adult women have body hair. It's not sluttish, disgusting or immoral. It is The Daily Femail section writers who have "let the side down".

Newsagents Family Friendly Policy

Nayam Patel, a Winchmore Hill newsagent, is backing a campaign to move lads mags to the top shelf. The MP for Enfield Southgate David Burrowes is supporting the campaign and giving family friendly certificates to newsagents who follow a family friendly magazine display policy.

full story in this is hertfordshire

Lib Dem MP challenges WH Smiths

Lib Dem MP Don Foster has challenged lads mags retailers to clean up their acts. He claims that leading British Retailer WH Smith cannot even adhere to its own code on displaying lads magazines.

My own feeling is that when even a leading newsagent such as WH Smith consistently chooses to ignore both it own standards and the National Federation of Retail Newsagent guidelines it is time for national legally enforceable standards. Self regulation is not working.

http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/lads-mags-are-still-too-exposed-foster.html