750 Naked Women for Peace

[jimmoyer]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0208-06.htm


Published on Sunday, February 9, 2003 by The Sunday Mail (Brisbane, Australia)
750 Women Go Nude in Protest


HUNDREDS of women bared all today in a visual anti-war demonstration on a hillside near the northern NSW beach town of Byron Bay.


750 nude women form a heart around the words 'No War' on a hillside near the town of Byron bay, 700 kilometers (435 miles) north of Sydney, Australia, Saturday, Feb. 8, 2003. The women said they wanted to send Prime Minister John Howard a message to recall Australian troops from the middle east. (AP Photo/Icon Images)

More than 750 female protesters shed their clothing during the protest, lying naked end to end on a grassy knoll on a private property, to form a heart shape around the words "No War" for an aerial photograph.

Australia has sent troops and approved an RAAF fighter squadron deployment to join US and British forces in the Gulf preparing for a possible war in Iraq.

But it has yet to publicly commit itself to joining any UN-approved or US-led military action in Iraq.

Today's larger-than-expected turnout for the 'Disrobe to Disarm', prompted by a similar protest in the US, even surprised organisers.

"I was completely overwhelmed," Australian jazz and blues singer Grace Knight, who led organisational efforts for today's protest, told AAP.

"I needed at the very least 67 women and I prayed for 250, and we got more than 750.

"What that tells me is that 750 women came and took the opportunity to get quite uncomfortable in a field - I know I felt quite uncomfortable - because we thought that was the only way we could get the federal government's attention."

Also See:
Baring Witness website

Naked Ploy Is Latest Threat in Oil Wars
ABC News 7/31/2002

The former Eurogliders lead singer, speaking while rushing to catch a flight to Tasmania where she has a gig this weekend, said the nude protest group included babies, teenagers and elderly women.

"There were 80-year-old women there whose husbands were Vietnam war veterans," Knight said.

"We wanted to spell out a clear message very quickly, so we used the words: 'No War'."

She said that with hundreds choosing to bare all in the protest, and that it was limited only to women, demonstrated that many Australians were "extremely angry and frustrated" about involvement in a possible war on Iraq.

Australian comedienne, Mandy Nolan, assumed the role of 'Mistress of Undressing', synchronising the protesters and helping them through the disrobing protest, which was done in seconds, Knight said.

Easing participants' nudity nerves with humour, Nolan dubbed the event the "bush against Bush" protest.

One middle-aged woman had the words "Bare it all for the boys Down Under" written down her back.

"The protest was not visible to any other public area, we were there to ensure the women were not bothered by outsiders," a local policeman told AAP.


About 30 naked women lay down in the snow in Central Park forming the words "No Bush" in an event described as a "nude political action photo shoot" in New York on February 7, 2003. The protesters are opposed to U.S. President George Bush's policies and possible U.S. led war against Iraq. REUTERS/Peter Morgan


Smaller anti-war protests were staged elsewhere on in NSW and Queensland today.

The Byron Bay protest was one of a number of similar nude protests around the world, in a climate of increasing anti-war sentiment.

Late yesterday (AEDT), about 30 women scurried into the heart of Central Park in New York City, disrobing amid steady snowfall to display their deep misgivings about war.

In shivering temperatures, the American women used their naked bodies to spell out the words, "No Bush".

Prime Minister John Howard left Sydney on Saturday on a week-long trip in which he plans to meet with US President George Bush as well as UN, British and Indonesian leaders.

© 2003 Queensland Newspapers

###

 

[jimmoyer]

Vegas 'Game' Has Men Hunting Nude Women

Wednesday, July 16, 2003



NEW YORK — A new Las Vegas game gets thrill-seekers out of the casinos and into the great wide open — to shoot naked women with paintball guns.

In "Hunting for Bambi," men pay $10,000 each for the challenge of tracking the women, who are nude except for sneakers, and trying to blast them with colored paint.

• Video: Hunting Bambi

"You can actually hunt one of our Bambi [expletive] and shoot her with paintballs," Mike Burdick, who runs the game and the site for Real Men Outdoor Productions, says on his Web site, www.huntingforbambi.com.

According to the site, the hunters also have the option of mounting their prey when they're done — and having sex with the women.

Despite criticism that the game is sick and barbaric, Burdick said it was all in fun and caters to both male and female fantasies.

"The majority of women have a deep-seated fantasy of that bad-boy image, to be sought after by a stranger," he told Fox News, adding that the women get paid $1,000 to participate in the game — and $2,500 if they avoid getting hit.

Women's groups and legal experts are, not surprisingly, up in arms over the cruel game.

"I couldn't quite believe it. [The site] advertised this as really hurting people," said legal expert Susan Estrich on Fox News. "[They're] violating about 20 criminal laws, including assault."

The National Organization for Women has also spoken out against the game.

"It's appalling, and it's really frightening," Rita Haley, president of NOW's New York City chapter, told the New York Post. "It says something about the men who want to play this game and something about the financial climate that drives women to participate. The big fear is that somebody who plays will eventually want to use real bullets."

But at least one woman who has participated as a target in "Bambi" said people are over-reacting.

"We're not getting hurt that bad," Taylor, who didn't give a last name, told Fox News. "[The paintballs] don't hurt as bad as everyone says they do. It's about as bad as getting slugged in the arm."

 

[jimmoyer]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050325/1821224_F.shtml


from the illegal-search? dept.
Yes, I'm a bit worried about what kind of people will find this post via Google in a few days, but... It appears that mobile phone security is suddenly getting a lot more attention -- and for some reason, it's got a lot to do with naked women. First, there was the whole Paris Hilton incident, where her naked camera phone photos were spread all over the internet due to weak server security from Danger and T-Mobile, and now comes the amazingly bizarre story of two cops who arrested a woman for drunk driving and then downloaded her naked camera phone photos to a PDA. No one seems to want to explain why a drunk driving arrest would involve checking out the photos on someone's phone. Then again, this case has a number of oddities, including the fact that the cop's partner later called the woman to ask her for a date. However, as the article points out, the cops might not have done anything illegal -- and someone even claims that this is no different than if someone had lost their wallet and it had nude photos inside. Except that doesn't seem quite right. This wasn't a case where the woman lost her phone. This was a situation where the cop clearly took it and then actively went through it, apparently looking for photos. That seems to go beyond the standard investigative technique needed to judge whether or not a driver is sober. Either way, it appears that pictures of naked women are suddenly driving forward the important discussion on increasing wireless security. People always said that porn leads the way towards technology innovation, but they probably didn't mean this way.

 

[jimmoyer]

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=350351



Chinese women's magazine renews controversy with naked man meal


Tuesday, September 27, 2005 at 07:19 JST
BEIJING — A women's magazine in southwestern China has shot tapes of a two-hour feast served on a naked man's body in response to a flap last year over a Japanese restaurant in China that served sushi on women's bodies, the event organizer said Monday.

New Female, a magazine under the All-China Women's Federation in Chongqing, last week gave China Central TV tapes of a film shot in June 2004 of seven women eating a largely Japanese-style feast off the body of a 21-year-old man with a banana leaf over his private parts, said magazine editor-in-chief Wang Ji.



The CCTV news channel ran "a few seconds" of the broadcast, Wang said. Local media and the popular Chinese news portal Sina.com have since followed up with their own stories, some with photos of the meal.

Wang said New Female organized the private meal after noting the popular outrage over the use of two female university students at the upscale Japanese Hefeng Village Huaishi Cuisine restaurant complex in Kunming, also a city in southwestern China.

Serving food on a man has raised a storm of new criticism, much of it expressed online after Chongqing residents learned of the event last year, Wang said.

"I remember one comment, saying this is OK for women, but not for men. As you know, traditionally men's position in society is above that of women," said Wang, who is a man. "But this meal is a kind of criticism. You don't want to insult the women."

Senior staff members at the Hefeng Village restaurant say they stopped serving sushi on naked women after the story came to light in April 2004. The restaurant said it sold meals on women, who were decorated with shells and stones, in keeping with a Japanese culinary tradition.

Meals there would cost about 1,000 yuan ($124). In May this year, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce expressly banned meals on naked women.

Unlike the restaurant in Kunming, New Female did not sell tickets to the meal or involve the public in any way, Wang said. He said the man involved was chosen from 43 male models who tried out for the volunteer job. The film cost about 4,000 yuan.

The female diners, who were watched by more than 10 magazine staff members, took about 40 minutes to relax with the man, nicknamed Xiao Bo, according to the Chongqing Evening News. When one woman asked the man if he was hungry, he said he was, and cold as well, the paper said.

New Female magazine has no plans to repeat the event, Wang said.

© 2005 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.


Japan Today Discussion
19 Total Messages (Click here to show all)
15 Messages Shown (Scroll down for most recent)

Make my day...
Sammy Masen (Sep 27 2005 - 09:33)


Oh, this is going to be a fun day, I can feel it coming. Big question, (easy moderator, we'll keep it clean) was he face up or down? If face up, were there any noticeable rising movements with the banana leaf perhaps?

Chinese women's magazine renews controversy with naked man meal
cleo (Sep 27 2005 - 09:46)


I can't imagine the food looked very appetising.

Pass.

Here's the details
nomad99 (Sep 27 2005 - 09:53)


... from a rather infamous Chinese blogger.

... Check it out:

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200509brief.htm#112

Japanese tradition?
Kijimuna (Sep 27 2005 - 10:00)


I think there was a photo of this in that photobook "A Day in the Life of Japan". I figured that it was just a fuzoku place with a twist rather than some longstanding national practice. Over the past five years, I have seen that represented as "traditional" on tv in several countries. London TV showed some restaurant serving up gringo sushi on somewhat pastier versions of the platform than what was in the photobook. I smirked at how oriental and cosmopolitan the white girls must have thought they were being, but now I think I should ask:

Long standing tradition? Or tabloid editorial decision-making?

Chinese women's magazine renews controversy with naked man meal
nagasaki.hiroshima (Sep 27 2005 - 10:03)


Well, I guess the ladies were shocked to see the enormous erectus and took them 40 minutes to have the 'thing' relaxed.

CHINESE COPY CAT
SEKA (Sep 27 2005 - 10:55)


What a pathetic and unoriginal idea. This was already done by Japanese 'artists' and the Chinese are copying it because they do not have one original creative thought in their commmie minds. I was not impressed when the Japanese did it. In fact I thought it was pretentious as well as a waste of food. The Chinese are devoid of any creative or artistic ideas because their minds have been stifled by communism.

I agree with Kijimuna
kasane (Sep 27 2005 - 11:19)


This is not a part of "Japanese culinary tradition" like the Hefeng Village restaurant was claiming.

Apparently people visit Japan from other countries, get invited to Japanese fuzoku, and assume that what they're treated to there is part of Japanese tradition. The guys who invite them to those places might even tell them it is. (Trust me, drunk Japanese businessmen tell a lot of bs to foreign clients they're trying to entertain.) I think the restaurant owners probably did it to attract wealthy perverts, and claimed that it was Japanese tradition to justify it.

(BTW, I don't really mind this kind of thing going on in a fuzoku, if the girls want to do it. But it's wrong for a restaurant to do it and claim that this is some kind of tradition.)

As far as the magazine is concerned, I think they did it to make a statement. I think they were trying to make people think about what the restaurant did by turning the tables and substituting a naked man for the naked women.

Chinese women's magazine renews controversy with naked man meal
flavorly (Sep 27 2005 - 12:52)


"The Chinese are devoid of any creative or artistic ideas because their minds have been stifled by communism."

Well, on the bright side, that's changing.

What kind of creativity and art do you like? Where does it come from?

Hmmm,
Shonuff (Sep 27 2005 - 13:30)


I guess a short meal...a quick bite before going out perhaps?

Nama haru maki......
kill da cat (Sep 27 2005 - 16:01)


anybody?

Chinese women's magazine renews controversy with naked man meal
Andagi (Sep 27 2005 - 20:00)


Pull stick under banana leaf for salad dressing....

Chinese women's magazine renews controversy with naked man meal
perfectblue (Sep 27 2005 - 23:43)


Bannana leaf? maybe a bannan skin would have been more appropriate

....
anjiro (Sep 28 2005 - 02:15)


we Asians...you've gotta love us

the real question
MacGeek (Sep 28 2005 - 02:28)


If it took the ladies 40 minutes to get comfortable with the man were they really comfortable with Wang?

 

[jimmoyer]

http://www.untitleddocument.co.uk/Issue21/nakedwomenlinked.html


Could this woman convince you to buy products?

Researchers have established a definite link between women in various advanced stages of undress and the desire to own various products.

The news comes as a result of a four year study which closely examined the relationship between such diverse consumables as cars, fabric softener and 3D accelerator cards.

"We found that almost all products, however mundane or even utterly pointless, can be transformed into absolutely essential purchases with the simple addition of a young female in fetching lingerie," said head researcher Albert Finster. "This could turn the world of advertising upside down."

Finster foresees a time, not far from now, when pretty models such as those currently used to display clothes at fashion shows, could be shanghaied into selling almost anything.

"The possibilities are endless," he mused. "For example, and this is completely off the top of my head, a big car company such as, say, Citroen, could employ someone like Claudia Schiffer to make a fairly run-of-the-mill car seem, by association, sexy."

Francois du Clerc, chairman of the French automobile giant, was dismissive of this idea, however.

"It is ridiculous to suggest that people would buy our vehicles simply because a svelte German woman undressed near it," he retorted. "People buy our cars because of their attractive price-performance ratio, impressive safety record and cutting edge styling. To say that people could be swayed in their purchase decisions by a glimpse of breast is to insult them."

But Finster is adamant, pointing to the 800-page report to support his claim.

"We tested over two thousand subjects in one experiment, which we called the 'Soft Drink Challenge'," he explained. "The subject was presented with two identical cans of soft drink, one placed on a glass topped beech table, and one nestling between the bosoms of a seventeen year old girl in a string bikini. In 98 percent of cases, the testee opted for the can which dripped condensation onto the firm, glistening mounds of flesh."

Finster's team also discovered that the desirability of an item is inversely proportional to the amount of clothing a woman is wearing.


How about this one?

In repeated experiments, fully clothed women, particularly those in loose-fitting, shapeless clothes, had little effect on the need to possess an object. Conversely completely naked women, or those wearing only high heeled shoes, were able to elevate even those things which, in isolation, were positively undesirable, to the status of "must-have".

"Incredibly, we found that most men would rather eat slices of raw onion off the stomach of a nude Playboy model than partake of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding served by their own mothers in a housecoat," Finster revealed.

Naked women everywhere have welcomed the news. Cindi Price, a regular centrefold of Club magazine and president of the National Association for the Advancement of Naked Women, said: "At last, naked women can make a useful contribution to society. Now we can help multinational corporations to spread the word about their products to a wider audience, instead of simply providing fantasy material for men in raincoats to masturbate over."

She added: "I like to be wined and dined. I'm just an old romantic at heart."

 

[jimmoyer]

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-05/22/content_444640.htm


China bans meals served on naked women
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-22 13:58

China's State Administration of Industry and Commerce issued a notice this weekend banning meals served on naked bodies, officially canceling the service offered by a restaurant in southwestern China that served sushi on unclothed female university students, a Beijing newspaper reported Sunday.


A woman lies on a table with meals spreaded on her naked body in this file photo. China's market regulators issued an order on May 20 to ban this practice, saying it's an insult to human dignity. [file]
The Saturday pronouncement forbids the service because it "insults people's moral quality," according to the Beijing Times. Serving food on women's bodies also "spreads commercial activity with poor culture," the paper said, citing the administration's notice.

In April 2004, Chinese media reported that the Hefeng Village Huaishi Cuisine Restaurant in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, was serving sushi and other Japanese food on two naked university students as they lay on their backs.

Customers would pay 1,000 yuan (about $120) each for the meal after making reservations up to three days in advance, media said.

Flowers, shells and rocks also adorned the women's bodies, according to a photo in the Beijing paper.

The women lay calmly as people ate, a restaurant manager told Kunming media, which said this style of dining existed in "ancient Japan." ADVERTISEMENT



After the reports came out in April 2004, raising questions among more conservative Kunming residents, a restaurant staff member said the service had been cancelled.

The State Administration of Industry and Commerce notice bars nudity for other dining and entertainment purposes, including "meals on breasts" served in Changsha, Hunan province, and naked models used in an art exhibit at Wuyi Mountain in southern China.

 

[jimmoyer]

300 Naked Women Feared Lost In Computer Crash
July 18, 2001 | Issue 37•24


ELLICOTT CITY, MD–An estimated 300 naked women, including actresses Pamela Anderson and Shannon Elizabeth, are feared lost as the result of a tragic computer crash Monday. "One minute, they were there, and the next, they were gone," said a visibly shaken Jonathan Blauvelt, 33, the Ellicott City resident whose Power Mac G4 was the site of the disaster. "To lose so many young girls in the blink of an eye like that, it's hard to comprehend. Angelina Jolie, Anna Kournikova, the chick from Species–it's just too much to bear." As data-recovery workers comb through the hard drive for signs of ass, Blauvelt is asking well-wishers to pray for the naked ladies' safe return.


Next Brief »

 

[jimmoyer]

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2079/context/archive

Naked Female Anchor? Let's Hold the Show
Run Date: 11/24/04
By Michele Weldon


WeNews commentator

A female TV news anchor in Ohio appeared naked on the air last week to cover an arts event. Michele Weldon, who teaches at the same journalism school that trained the anchor, explored why the incident was so regrettable.

Editor's Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's eNews.


(WOMENSENEWS)--This is one angle on a news story we didn't need.

Having a female television anchor cover an arts story while nude is like sending the Blue Man Group to cover the conflict in Fallujah.

You don't need the extra gimmick; just send the serious reporters wearing their clothes. It's a loopy idea that may pop into a news director's head at happy hour during sweeps week, but you don't say it aloud in a news meeting and you sure don't follow through.

But that's what happened in Cleveland. Viewers to the 11 p.m. broadcast on WOIO-TV earlier this month were treated to anchor Sharon Reed on air naked--that's wearing nothing at all--reporting on a nude photo installation that featured nude photos of herself, along with hundreds of others.

More than 130 news Web sites run by newspapers and other news outlets had the titillating story on their Web sites last week, at least one with a pop-up ad for Victoria's Secret showing bra-baring Super Model Tyra Banks. How fitting. Both Reed and Banks are exceptionally attractive black women, though their job descriptions of underwear model and news anchor should be decidedly different.

The goal of the story, according to reports quoting news director Steve Doerr, was to cover the story of Spencer Tunick's photographs in a new way. The story was also aimed, he said, at raising ratings during the November sweeps.


And it reportedly did just that. Reed, on the stations' website, reports that more than 700,000 viewers watched her "Body of Art" report and more than 1 million people visited the website for what she calls "a television news first." The Associated Press reported that the news broadcast received a 17.1 share of the market, another record. And the station received no slap on the wrist from the FCC since it was aired an hour after curfew prohibiting indecent material broadcast from 6-10 p.m.

Not Such a Novel Twist
Naked women and news; it's not such a novel twist.

There are the Czech topless weather girls and a stripping Svetlana Pesotskaya on Moscow's M1 TV reporting stories for the "Naked Truth." There's also the Naked News on Live TV! carrying stripper news and naked weathergirls all over Canada, European mobile phones and in U.S. hotel rooms.

And while CNN's ad a couple of years ago promoting newscaster Paula Zahn didn't involve nudity, it was a nakedly sexist stunt. In the ad, CNN called Zahn a "a little bit sexy" and showed Zahn's profile and lips along with the words "provocative" and "sexy" just as the music stops for what sounds like a zipper. (CNN executives protested and the ad was yanked, but still it was out there long enough to get the message across.)

It all serves to remind us that as women in journalism have not come as far on the equality train as we all hoped. It's a new take on an old fable, except now it is the anchor who has no clothes.

No matter how many countries and stations board the nudity news bus, trading on a woman's dignity should never be the norm.

"I think it was a silly thing to do and I'm curious to know how it came about," said Joe Angotti, chair of the broadcast department at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. The former NBC vice president added, "Why the news director would permit this is beyond me. Did a media consultant come to the station and tell them to try this?"

I bet good money no matter what consultant advised such a stunt, Barbara Walters would refuse to offer a closer view of her naked self on "The View." And though Diane Sawyer has wiggled into a body glove to participate in Cirque due Soleil, I am absolutely certain she wouldn't even remove her wig on camera. It's called exploitation, not experimentation.

This is not about the poor choice of a young television journalist. Reed told the Cleveland Plain Dealer she has no regrets. "I don't do anything I don't want to do for any job, or anything," she reportedly said.

Posing nude, being nude or even getting caught nude on film may even enhance her career, as evidenced by the feedback in viewer mail and national interest in the stunt. Reed is prominently featured on the WOIO Web site where streaming video shows the clip to the point where Reed begins to strip. Then it stops.

Look what nudity did for Vanessa Williams, the first black woman to win the Miss America pageant. The now successful singer and actress was crowned in 1984, but forced to abdicate only 10 months later when sexually explicit photographs of her and another woman were made public. And then her film and music career exploded.

Traded Like Pork Bellies in Bear Market
This is not about sexy stunts. This is really about how women are dehumanized, devalued and traded like pork bellies in a bull market.

It's why Nicollette Sheridan was buck naked in a promo for "Desperate Housewives" before ABC-TV's Monday Night Football that same naked night. It's why Anna Nicole Smith's bizarre slur-infested body massage was news last week. The former Playboy model and current spokesperson for Trim Spa diet plan writhed at the podium at the American Music Awards rubbing her chest and waist before getting down to the business of introducing nominee Kanye West. She later blamed her bizarre actions on nearsightedness.

Put simply, naked and nearly-naked women are good for ratings. They may have all done it voluntarily, but I bet very few station managers ask the men in the office to pull a full Monty for ratings.

You could argue it was choice. Surely Reed had a choice. Surely Sheridan, too. And maybe if her eyesight was better, Smith would have felt as if she had a choice. But the choice seems consistently to be to show the raw goods of naked or nearly-naked women as a means to an end. Not naked men.

You don't see any naked men in this country reading sports news or pre-empting "Wife Swap" in a publicity stunt to boost ratings. You don't see Charlie Gibson dropping trousers on "Good Morning America."

A talented, attractive television journalist, and a Medill graduate, Reed did more than she may have intended.

She showed the young women behind her in journalism schools here and across the country that it is OK to compromise, that it is OK to trade on her looks for ratings and to have notoriety for more than the content of her stories. That decision to be beauty rather than brains, whether she initiated it or not, makes a little less out of all of us, it literally strips away our credibility and places us a step below male journalists.

"As an aspiring female journalist, I'm shocked a professional would exploit herself to boost ratings," said 20-year-old Aristea Brady, a junior broadcast journalism major at Medill.

It didn't need to happen and it shouldn't have. That's why they call it covering the news.

Michele Weldon is an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Evanston, Ill. and author of two books, "I Closed My Eyes: Revelations of a Battered Woman" and "Writing to Save Your Life: How to Honor Your Story Through Journaling."




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[Ten Packs]

Jim, no offense, but do you know how to use the "URL" tags when posting???

 

[jimmoyer]

No.