Ads - Part 38

Tom Ford

Tom Ford is an American fashion designer and seller of the Tom Ford brand of menswear and accessories.  Above, Ford, in the suit, buffs the ass of model Colton Haynes for a photo shoot.

Ford worked as a designer at Gucci, and when Gucci acquired Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) in 1999, Ford became the creative director at YSL.  He was responsible for the famous full-frontal ad for the YSL fragrance M7, above, featuring martial arts champion Samuel de Cubber.

Here's another version of the ad, in which de Cubber is even more visible.

I recently found this alternative version of the ad for M7, featuring another model whose name I do not know.

Ford left Gucci/YSL and launched his own Tom Ford line of menswear, beauty, eyewear and accessories in 2006.  His products included the fragrance Tom Ford for Men, featured in the ad above.  In case you hadn't guessed, Tom Ford is gay, and this ad is obviously aimed at gay men.

His fragrance Neroli Portofino came out in 2011, with more naked ads.

Venfield 8 produced this satire of a Neroli Portofino ad, but the joke may be on Venfield 8, because given Tom Ford's previous nude ads, it looks like just the sort of ad that Ford would approve.

In 2014, Tom Ford came out with this penis necklace pendant.  It was quickly condemned by the Catholic League for its resemblance to a cross, but Ford dismissed the critics, saying they could imagine whatever they wanted.

Tom Ford was featured in Out magazine in 2007.  We end with this photo from the magazine of Ford, at left, snapping a towel at two other guys.

Vintage Military - Part 43

 U.S. Conscription - World War I

Recruits in the U.S, like other countries, were examined naked.  This War Department photo from 1917-1918 shows a physical exam in Boston, Massachusetts.  Note where the eyes of the examiner at left are looking.

Physical exams in 1917-1918 at Camp Gordon, Georgia.  This was evidently an assembly-line process.

Men passing the medical inspection for infectious disease or vermin in 1918 at Camp Devens, Massachusetts.

Above is an excerpt from a Department of Defense video about the draft in World War I.  The new recruits shower and then are physically examined naked.

This aviation recruit is being medically examined in April, 1918 in the Episcopal Hospital, Washington, DC.  The recruit is first weighed, above, then examined in the next 5 photos.

We've seen these photos before, but they're worth showing again.  Examining the shoulder ...

the forearm ...

the groin ("please cough") ...

the foot ...

and this exam is very thorough.

This black recruit is being measured for clothing at Camp Meade, Maryland (later Fort Meade).  Of course, the Army was segregated in those days.  The photo dates from Oct. 4, 1918.  Little did they know that World War I would end the following month on Armistice Day, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

Performers - Part 37

Fire Dancers

Fire dancing involves a performer twirling around objects with fire at the ends.  It's always done after dark so the fire makes moving patterns of light, and it's often done on a beach in tropical locations.  Some fire dancers perform naked.

The dancer may twirl more than one baton, like this guy ...

or this guy.

Or he may spin what are called poi, derived from Polynesian culture, at the end of strings or chains.

More poi spinning.

This talented performer is spinning poi from a chain attached to his penis.

Round and round it goes ...

and where it's attached, everyone knows.

We end with a clip from a fire dancing performance at the Canadian Naturist Festival at the Bare Oaks Naturist Park in Ontario, Canada.

Not the Same Old Song - Part 31

 Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

This hit song by the Andrews Sisters appeared in the 1941 Abbot and Costello comedy Buck Privates and was also released as a single.

To accompany the song, I used video clips of the French trumpet player named Lucien who performed at the 2016 World Naked Bike Ride in London.  Yes, I know he's playing a trumpet, not a bugle, but in the song, the boogie woogie bugle boy is a trumpet player who got drafted.  Plus, the brass solos in the song are obviously played on a trumpet, not a bugle, because the chromatic "blue" notes are far beyond the notes that a bugle can play (it can only play the harmonics of a single note, which make up a major chord).

Protests - Part 38

 San Francisco Anti-Nudity Protest
April 2016

On April 3, 2016, San Francisco nudity activist Gypsy Taub (the woman holding the sign at left) organized a protest march against San Francisco's anti-nudity laws that were passed in 2012.  Before that, public nudity in San Francisco was perfectly legal.

The march ended outside City Hall, above.  The march celebrated International Women's Day, but the great majority of the naked marchers were men ...

like this guy with his skateboard ...

and these guys, one of whom is holding his dog on a leash, visible in photo 2 above.

Here's the skateboard guy again.

The protesters started at Jane Warner Plaza in the Castro district and marched down Market Street to City Hall.  Nudity is still permitted at events that have gotten a permit.  Taub got a permit for this march, so the police didn't interfere.

Some protesters carried signs with famous nude works of art.  This guy's sign celebrates The Origin of the World, a painting by Gustave Courbet in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris that shows a woman's vagina.

Some onlookers eyeing one of the marchers.

This sign shows Michelangelo's statue of David, along with a message.  And here's our skateboarder friend again.

The result of the march?  The laws were not changed, but onlookers got to see some naked people.

Artists - Part 41

Taner Ceylan

Taner Ceylan is a Turkish painter born in 1967 in Germany but now living and working in Istanbul.  Above is a self-portrait Adam Entering Me (2005).

We've previously seen this painting Ball (2001) of two guys balling in a ballroom while being serenaded by a string trio.

Much of Taner's work is photo-realistic.  Though it's hard to believe, his website says that the picture above, Together (2007), is not a photo.  It's oil on canvas.

Taner got into trouble for a 2011 series called Lost Paintings depicting Turkey's past as the Ottoman Empire.  The painting above is called 1640.  It depicts an Ottoman man being attended by his slave.

But what really caused a furor was the painting above, called 1879.  It shows an Ottoman noblewoman in front of Courbet's painting L'Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World), which depicts a naked woman's vagina, which in a sense is the origin of us all.

Taner received death threats.  "How can you paint an Ottoman woman in front of a vagina?  We will kill you!"  He was forced to resign his position at Istanbul's Yeditepe University, and he lived with two policemen outside his door and a bodyguard for four months.

Ironically, his more homoerotic art did not seem to arouse the same indignation.  Above is Good Morning Mr Courbet (2005).

This is Figure With Horse (1999).

Galaxy (2007).

And there are more self-portraits.  This is Me Swimming In Çirali (2004).

We end with Taner and Taner (2003), which transforms the old rebuke "go fuck yourself" into a fantasy.

To see more of Taner Ceylan's work, go to his website tanerceylan.com.

Ivy League Posture Photos - Part 17

Ivy League Posture Photos

Yale started taking nude photos of incoming freshmen in 1919 as part of a program to detect and correct posture problems.  The Yale photos have erroneously been associated with William Sheldon, a psychologist at Harvard and author of Nazi-like eugenic theories who used Harvard nude posture photos to illustrate his theory of somatypes.  But, as far as I can tell, the Yale photos are not connected to Sheldon's work.

Here are five more posture photos taken at Yale that I had the opportunity to acquire.  For privacy reasons, I redact the names of men who might still be alive.  Two of these men have passed away, so their names are not redacted.

This is Yale freshman N.D. on Oct. 6, 1953.

An article in the Journal of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation described how in spring, 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to produce "PhotoMetric" posture photos like this showing front, rear, side and top views.

This is Yale freshman D.E. on Oct. 6, 1953.

This is Yale freshman W.E. on Oct. 13, 1953.

Note the strange pins stuck to each student's back and chest.  The pins were stuck on at specific points for later posture analysis.  Supposedly, by examining the angles formed by connecting the points where the pins touched the body, certain posture problems could be detected.

This is Yale freshman David Henry Elwell on Oct. 13, 1953.

This is Yale freshman William Hinrichs on Nov. 3, 1953.

Were these photos an invasion of privacy for the students?  By today's standards, yes.  By the standards of the day, not so much.  In that era, guys were routinely naked around each other in locker rooms and in swimming pools when women weren't present.  Being asked to strip and even being photographed naked as part of a posture examination would not seem too outrageous, since the staff conducting this was all-male (and remember that Yale was an all-male school).

Some of my followers have questioned the propriety of publishing these photos, since the students did not give consent for their publication.  My reply:

1. I only publish the names of students who have died.  To protect their privacy, I have redacted the names of students who may still be alive (despite the fact that their names have already been published on an online auction site).  Legally, the right to privacy does not extend beyond death, i.e. it does not extend to spouses, children, grandchildren, etc. of the deceased person.

2. In my opinion, publishing these photos is similar to publishing nude photos of athletes and soldiers taken by LIFE magazine photographers.  At the time, the understanding of the photo subjects was that photos with frontal nudity would never be published in the magazine (and they never were), but the LIFE photo archive containing those photos is now publicly available online, and nobody seems to be complaining about it.

3. I consider these photos to be a historical record of the time.  Almost all of the Ivy League posture photos were burned when their existence became widely known.  In my opinion, that was akin to book-burning of books that someone claimed were obscene.  These photos are not obscene.  They should be celebrated, not hidden away.