Feminist Law Professors

According to the NYT:

The next time R. J. Reynolds Tobacco asks smokers to walk a mile for a Camel, watch how many of them are in high heels.

Reynolds, eager to increase the sales of its fast-growing Camel brand among women, is introducing a variety aimed at female smokers. The new variation, Camel No. 9, has a name that evokes women’s fragrances like Chanel No. 19, as well as a song about romance,”Love Potion No. 9.”

But don’t look for a Jo Camel to join Old Joe the dromedary on Camel packages, displays or posters. Rather, Camel No. 9 signals its intended buyers with subtler cues like its colors, a hot-pink fuchsia and a minty-green teal; its slogan,”Light and luscious”; and the flowers that surround the packs in magazine ads. …

[Sarcasm] Flowers and pink, sure to be girl magnets. [/sarcasm] But what does this mean for Joe Camel, their longtime Spokesgenital?

–Ann Bartow

An account from the Miami New Times is here, with an excerpt below:

… The Bangbus formula is simple. As the bus — really, a white rental van — drives all over the Miami area, Greg Entner, who “performs” under the name Dirty Sanchez, acts as an antagonistic host and narrator who offers money to supposedly unwitting women in exchange for sexual favors. This is all smoke and mirrors, though. Usually, the people having sex are rookie couples or professional models. Once the women are “convinced” to get inside the van, the action starts, but it’s not a pool table quickie approach. The actual sex doesn’t come until the last ten minutes of the film. The majority of the time is spent suspending disbelief by capitalizing on the assumption that women will do anything for a few dollars.

Lori needed the money, but once she knew she would be having all-out sex in front of the camera, she says she was hesitant: “They kept emphasizing the money. Think about the money. If you need the money, we’ll give it to you, just as soon as you sign.’ I had never heard of Ox Ideas and I figured no one else had either, so I did it.”

Lori claims that she was unaware Ox Ideas and Bangbus were one and the same until the day of the shoot.

“Greg [Entner] came out and said that it would just be a minute while they cleaned the bus, and that’s when he told us about the skit,” Lori recalls.

Entner was polite and amicable until the red light came on, she says, but once the camera was rolling, he let his true colors show. “That’s when he became a total prick. He started to taunt me and just make me feel very small.”

On the video it is clear that Lori is not happy. Entner berates her until she calls him an asshole. At one point, he directs Lori to bark like a dog, and later, with Donnie in her mouth, to squeal like a pig. Lori, afraid she would end up doing all this for free, grudgingly agrees. Donnie chuckles and trades high fives with Sanchez.

She was encouraged, however, by the thought that in a couple of days she would receive her share of the $1200 she and Donnie had just earned and this crisis would be behind her. The sad truth is that in the world of reality porn the only sure thing is that you are going to get fucked. Poor Lori found this out the hard way. In a matter of hours, her images were available to anybody with Internet access and a credit card.

For Internet porn worshipers, Wednesdays are the Sabbath. That is the day Bangbus.com posts the new videos for the week. When co-workers and patrons from Lori’s restaurant job downloaded her Bangbus episode, they instantly recognized her.

Not only was her image the Bangbus feature of the week, but, by the next day, people had already started to trade her video file, much as music lovers do with MP3s, on peer-to-peer file sharing networks such as Kazaa and WinMX. Once it was posted to one of these networks, Lori’s video file was renamed with her true identity and workplace. After that, it was only a matter of time before her brother in upstate New York, an avid WinMx user and Bangbus fan, would come across his little sister’s fifteen minutes of shame.

What’s more, Ox Ideas wrote out a check to Donnie for the entire $1200. Unbeknownst to Lori, Donnie was himself in serious debt. So it isn’t surprising that he would take advantage of the situation and exploit his former lover. He had already pimped her out and now it was time to collect. He cashed the check and vanished.

“As far as the payment, it’s common that one of the two individuals performing will ask for full payment to be made to one of them because of lack of a bank account or what have you. If her boyfriend hustled her out of her money, there really isn’t anything Bangbus can do about that,” said Walters. …

NB: I don’t think “Lori” has anything to be ashamed of, but the people who treated her so badly certainly do.

–Ann Bartow

Tonight at 10 p.m., PBS airs the Byron Hurt documentary, “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes.”   One critic describes the film as “a thought-provoking look into how the concepts of sexism, misogyny, and heterosexuality manifest themselves in a black male living in a white patriarchal society.”   Vibe magazine’s interview with Mr. Hurt, “On Manhood in Hip Hop,” is available here.

-Bridget Crawford

“Axe Fantasy Mousepad”

From this site, which I don’t recommend either. Then there is the “Axe Fantasy” page, which features things like “Seduction Tips” (under the “Hot Stuff” tab) that are so ridiculous it’s hard to believe it isn’t satire.

From The Chicago Reader:

Debra Pickett resigned from the Sun-Times Monday afternoon, minutes after being asked to do a story she thought was preposterous.”I laughed,”says Pickett, recalling her response when features editor Christine Ledbetter called with the assignment to breast-feed her infant son in public places and write about it. “I have to say I didn’t take it terribly seriously.” She’d seen other Sun-Times stories begin with an “outrageous premise” then get negotiated into something not beneath the dignity of adults. Some other day, she and Ledbetter might have begun negotiating. But not this time. Pickett, who was due to return from maternity leave February 26, tells me,”I said, ‘Well, there’s probably a conversation I need to have with Don Hayner before I can talk to you further about this assignment.'”Hayner’s the managing editor. Pickett had been trying to reach him all day. “I felt the ground had shifted a little bit under my feet while I was gone,” she says, and she wanted Hayner to tell her where she stood. Her resignation was already a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood. The breast-feeding assignment shifted the ground a little more. She called her husband, an Amtrak executive who was on a train between Washington and Philadelphia, and they talked. Then she reached Hayner. She didn’t ask where she stood. She quit. …

… She says the paper encouraged her boyfriend columns, which led to husband columns and baby columns — three of her last four columns mentioned her son (whom, by the way, she does nurse in public places).”That’s what my unique signature was,”she says.”That’s what people came to expect and associate me with. That was fine, a lot of fun, but it’s not necessarily who you want to be your entire adult life.”By the measure of what it covers and with whom, the Sun-Times is a small paper. There’s not much opportunity for personal reinvention. “The Sun-Times has a great staff writing about politics,”Pickett remarks, perhaps wistfully; an assignment to go forth and breast-feed is a pretty blunt way of being told your services won’t be required for that coverage. …

Via Adrants. That small type reads: “Linda Foster, CEO, Aged 29.” The yellow box in the bottom right says “Wonderbra,” the product that is being advertised. Apparently in Linda Foster’s case, wearing a Wonderbra causes so much discomfort she cannot concentrate well enough to absorb the text of the The Economist. Or something.

–Ann Bartow