Going off on a tangent: H&M do a h&mmy job of photoshopping

You may have noticed the H&M bikini adverts popping up on bus shelters around Sheffield,

(the worst offender, and the subject of this blog, available here, I recommend you look at the full screen version to get the full effect. I would have inserted the actual picture here but that would require me to download it to my computer first, and I don't think my graphics card is good enough.) and, presumably, the rest of the country. They’re easy to spot because you may have mistaken them for a heavily waxed David Dickinson, and they're accompanied by a realisation that we're already in a dystopian future. Airbrushed images are nothing new. We see them everywhere. But what’s exceptional about this series of ads is how hilariously bad they are.

For starters, it’s a really tacky, over the top photoshop job. The poor woman’s face is a different colour from the rest of her body. Maybe she left a facepack on in the tanning salon. The combination of her outrageously bronzed, almost varnished mahogany skin, and her wafer thin arms and neck give her the look of a cocktail sausage with a couple of extra sticks in. Her plastic-looking hair hangs limp and rigid as a nun’s wimple. She doesn’t have breasts. Instead, Patrick Stewart and Mohammed Al Fayed, wearing pink face masks like a tsars outbreak at gay pride, lurk round her chest. Not a single crease, wrinkle or fold is visible in her skin giving her the appearance of a waxwork made of Botox, and even her ribcage has been eerily removed. Maybe she’s in to auto-cunnilingus, or maybe they let George Lucas do the retouching. Her left hand fails to make an impact on her leg. Bizarrely, for a woman apparently seated in water, she shows no signs of being wet, neither on her swimwear or body. Her eerily white nose looks like one of Michael Jackson’s cast-offs. Even her belly button is reduced to a smooth dent, the unnatural white ring around it looking like she laid down on a frosted doughnut she didn't know what to do with. And she really shouldn’t have let someone slap her side with sun lotion on their hand.

I’m not against people looking nice, and obviously clothing shops aren’t going to hang their child-made rags on trolls, but is it really aspirational to look like you’ve been grown in a Petri dish? The Frankenstinian lovechild of Dale Winton, some silicone and a culture of E coli. It must be a depressing state of affairs for the model in question, if indeed there ever was such a person, or if they just took a photo of Andy Serkis in a blue onesie and built the picture around it. A model’s only job is to look nice, and if you fail in this so resoundingly that the photographer has to use state-of-the-art software to make you unrecognisable just so your visage is tolerable, it’s a pretty dismal state of affairs. And if this picture is an improvement on what she actually looks like, she must have looked fucking horrible in the first place. The only thing that poster is any good for is a public information warning about skin cancer. And they didn't even remember to remove the camel toe.


UPDATE
http://www.thelocal.se/40758/20120510/
In a rare "I told you so" moment, I am pleased to announce that H&M have apologised for this advert as it's been criticized for promoting skin cancer. They said of the model: "she is Brazilian, which means that she has a darker skin tone than most Europeans", which still begs the question as to why they decided to artificially slide her down six spaces on the Dulux colour chart from "soft pine" to "leather Wotsit". They haven't apologised for promoting anorexia, but we can count our blessings.

A boring thing I wrote on the EU with no wit or enthusiasm.

It’s only through studying the European Union that the absurdity of many eurosceptics’ positions has become apparent to me. An instinctive pro-European, I’ve never seen much allure in the idea that the more independence our arbitrarily-defined nation state possesses the better. More can be achieved as part of a whole, resources can be pooled, neighbouring countries can stop pointing guns at each other, and point them at some other common enemy, perhaps a country where the people have a different skin colour or religion. However, recently my concerns have become more codified.

My account of polling day for the local elections last year, on this very blog, included a description of a three hour conversation I held with a man running to be a councillor for UKIP. Quite why a party concerned primarily with the UK’s position within the EU contests local elections is another issue, but part way through the conversation he described the beauty of capitalism in that it is a self-adjusting and extremely complex and intricate system of resource allocation. It struck me odd then, as now, that someone would support the free movement of resources in almost every area, and demand the government simply allow capitalism to mould society as demand dictates, yet hold such opposition to the free movement of labour in the form of relaxed borders and immigration. Presumably in a capitalist world, the free movement of labour is crucial if it is to be optimally efficient.

This being said, I take more issue with the criticisms of the EU itself. It’s absolutely true that the European Union has a democratic deficit. There is only one directly elected body, the European Parliament, which has little power, comparable in terms of its scrutinising and legislation-delaying role to the British House of Lords, a fact which is often trumpeted by eurosceptics explain why the EU is unaccountable. But what these critics fail to acknowledge is the correlation between the amount of power an organisation has and the amount of democratic legitimacy it requires. No one would seriously suggest, I assume, that every time an international treaty is formed, it should require an elected international assembly between the relevant countries, and it’s important to remember that this is how the EU was formed and developed: by individual treaties. It’s wrong to view it as a static organisation that was designed with the powers it currently has, as well as the lack of democratic accountability it currently has. The EU is a continuing project and has been changing and developing for the last fifty years. The democratic deficit is something that, if eurosceptics would shut up and let the EU carry on changing rather than blocking every new treaty or constitution, will be addressed in time. It’s not sensible to argue for more democracy in the EU without also believing it should have sufficient power to warrant elections and democratic accountability. The way the EU has developed has led to the current state of a slightly higher power to accountability ratio than would be ideal, but this should change in time.

Both the Lisbon Treaty and the failed constitution of 2004 (both opposed by eurosceptics) wanted more powers to the European Parliament, to match the EU’s increasing legislative role. It is, of course, true that the EU is getting more say over more aspects of our lives, and as a result should be accountable to the European people, so why eurosceptics would oppose these moves is uncertain.

And at the other end of the spectrum, eurosceptics believe countries are losing their independence, which would surely be more so if there was a stronger supranationalist parliament, rather than the current reliance on intergovernmental institutions. The areas of the EU in which countries retain most of their independence are the Council of Ministers and the European Council, which are the negotiating forums of representatives of member governments who act in the interests of their people. On major treaties and so-called “higher” policy areas such as defence and foreign policy, member states exercise a veto, so no country is expected to sign up to things it disagrees with. For people who object to the removal of power from nation states, these appear to be pretty good measure to ensure sovereignty is retained. It’s impossible to have an EU that’s both perfectly democratic, and gives paramount importance to national governments.

So what frustrates me most about the eurosceptics is wanting to attack, on the one hand, the lack of independence of member states, and when the intergovernmental negotiating forums are mentioned as an answer to this, they change their focus to democratic accountability, which they opposed the improvement of in the form of opposition to any new treaty that comes from Brussels, and fail to realise that there’s no use in having a democratically elected parliament if it has no powers.

This circular logic is not grounded in reason, but in a deep protectionism and a general dislike for the idea of their country being a part of a whole rather than an end in itself. It’s a position born out of nationalism, and nationalism alone.

Gay Conversion

You probably heard of this story in the Guardian today ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/12/christian-anti-gay-ads-buses about a Christian group (http://www.core-issues.org/) advertising gay conversion on buses. (You may have also seen the amazing cartoon I did on it, below)

Anyway, I decided to write them an email: 

Dear Sir/Madam,

I recently became aware of your organisation as I was investigating people who deal with issues of realigning sexual orientation.

At present I am a heterosexual man, but have many homosexual friends, from whom I sometimes feel excluded when we socialise.

I would appreciate if you could advise me, from your expertise in the area, on how best to gain homosexual feelings. I am not saying I would like to become a homosexual permanently, but I would at least like to try bisexuality for a time, and was wondering if you could give me some guidance on how to go about this.

Thank you for your time,

Awaiting response. Will update.

Pubic Hair

I've recently been looking into the views of Sheikh Assim Al Hakeem, who is to women's rights as Nick Griffin is to multiculturalism, as he's speaking at Sheffield Hallam Islamic Society next week on, ahem, woman's rights in Islam. And while I could write an entire dissertation on the man's variety of views, resembling a pick'n'mix of hate, a selection box of contempt, a multi-pack of loathing, (available here http://www.assimalhakeem.net/ and here http://www.youtube.com/user/assimalhakeem) one thing that sprung out was his opinions on pubic hair.

Scanning through his videos, this gem popped up. "Eyebrows?" I thought. "Surely he doesn't have an opinion on them?"

It turns out that he does,  and also on, erm, other hair. Watch this video again, while keeping in mind that this old man shaves his balls. Go on. Do it.

That was fun, wasn't it?

Obviously Hakeem is a massive bellend, and I thought a lifetime of not seeing women, listening to music, or masturbating might have finally pushed him across the border to loopy land. So I Googled it, and lo and behold, the first result:
http://www.understanding-islam.com/q-and-a/cleansing-and-purification/pubic-hair-6386

To save you the trouble of reading it, a concerned Mulism (or an atheist pissing himself laughing) has asked for specific information on shaving the following areas: penis, scrotum, anus, Thighs - the part around the penis and scrotum and their extent as some say we need to go down till the knees [very specific??], The area in between the scrotum and the anus [This is getting pretty graphic. Once you're onto parts of the body that don't have a name, it's surely not worth worrying about?], The hips near the anus and the part further away, The part which is below the belly button and above the penis.

I'm beginning to pity this guy. He's so brainwashed that he's gone on the internet to ask a stranger which parts of his genitals he should be shaving from fear of divine retribution. Particularly when he asks if he has to start shaving from the right hand side. "Is it my right, or the right from Allah's perspective??"

Admittedly, the reply simply says he should shave his pubes in a pretty self-explanatory way "like you would remove the hair in and around the armpits." Yeah cheers, I'll just do what I do when I remove my armpit hair.

I'm a liberal. I think people should be able to believe and say whatever they want. But is it just me who thinks that people believe a deity gives a rat's (shaved) ass about their pubic hair have either been ludicrously brainwashed, are trying to manipulate others, or are in complete denial about the stupidity of what they're doing?

When Kim Jong Il died I read/heard something about the crazy stories about Kim's birth and life. An "expert" of some kind was asked whether Koreans actually believed these things. He replied that even if they don't, if you can make people say they believe such preposterous things you've dominated them psychologically to such an extent that you eliminate all resistance. I can't help but think something similar's going on here. "If we get people to shave their pubes, we get them to do ANYTHING."

UPDATE
And while we're here, I came across this http://www.assimalhakeem.net/node/3216

Basically some guy mistakenly thought Muslims have to pee standing up. I don't know where to begin...

Cartoons

Hi guys. I occasionally draw cartoons. As it turns out, I'm not a particularly good drawer or cartoon thinker-upper, but when has low quality ever stopped me from posting on here before? This is my equivalent of putting it on the fridge. (because it's where shitty drawings and stuff go, and because it's a place where only the people I live with will see it)

Dun this one recently. It's about economics or sumfin.

This is about British response to bad weather. Dun it during the snow.

Dun this one a few years ago when Rowan said we should adopt some Sharia law in UK. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7232661.stm)

This was around the same time as the Sharia thing (2008ish?) when a woman had argued she should be allowed to wear a burka in a primary school. I thought it would be funny if a ventriloquist made a similar claim, but with hindsight I should have left out Darth Vader.

I dun this one in an EU lecture the other day on the Eurozone debt crisis and have now digitally rendered it for computer. Self explanatory.