Rent Your Thighs Out for Money

A weekly roundup of anything fashion-related that's made us excited about having bodies that we can dress with clothes.

IT'S INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY!

Yay, a whole day dedicated to drawing attention to the gender imbalance and celebrating women. We say celebrate IWD by ditching your diet (you probably weren't on one), ripping up some magazines (that you probably don't read) and loving your glorious self. There's loads of stuff happening all over the world that you should totally get involved in, so if you feel that way inclined you can find out what's going on near you here. If you're lazy and prefer being liberal from the comfort of your bedroom, this week's tidbits are themed around IWD, so sit back and feel that sweet, sweet equality wash all over you. Mwah.

POSH SPICE MADE A RANGE ROVER

This morning the most chic and pouty of the Spice Girls, Victoria Beckham, was spotted cruising through London in the very car that she helped to design. The fact makes me jell because my car looks like a dirty tube seat and isn't a car.

Because being a successful musician, designer and part-time automotive expert clearly isn't enough, Posh has also gone tech. UK-based LadyGeek – a group supporting the increase of women in the technology industry, among other things – are campaigning for “changes in attitudes needed to drive gender diversity”. They're dedicated to showing just how important women are to technology and equally to calling bullshit on all the tiny, pink "woman friendly" electronics that, frankly, piss me off more than Sean Connery. Or maybe the same amount.

According to the stats, women represent a bigger financial opportunity than India and China combined, yet have only 17 percent of tech jobs in the UK. On top of that, women control 12 trillion of the global 18.4 trillion in global consumer spending (yay shopping!) but only one percent feel that technology manufacturers have them in mind when designing.

We should be doing everything we can to balance out the gender roles in the tech industry, and believe me, if I could afford this £80,000 car, I'd totally get it. Purely for political reasons, of course.

SEXISM LIVES ON YOUR THIGHS

Image via

We’ve heard of people using their heads as advertising space before, but apparently in Japan the gaze falls on a slightly more Sailor Moon-esque body part: the female upper thigh. Nice. Japanese PR company Absolute Territory (translated from "zettai ryouiki", the actual name given to this leg region) is offering to pay girls up to £80 to wear a temporary tattoo on their thigh for a minimum of eight hours. The only rules are that girls must be over 18 and have a social media account linked to at least 20 people who they can then post photos of their thighs to when they’re not flashing them in public. Apparently even Green Day have been using this as a means of promoting their new album.

I get the kitsch factor; it’s cute, it’s dumb, but this is objectification at its utmost, and just because it’s so extreme, that doesn’t mean we can brush it off as niche. Offering young women money to have men ogle their thighs does not strike me as a particularly positive idea. Our bodies are for nobody but ourselves. Can I get an AMEN?

TASTEFUL T-SHIRT DESIGN ON AMAZON

Yawn about those "Keep Calm and Carry On” t-shirts, right? Fashion hasn’t been this tired since Kate didn’t sleep for two weeks in 2001. Still, Amazon found a way to energise the notoriously boring design by selling a range of t-shirts boasting slogans like, “Keep Calm and Rape a Lot”, “Keep Calm and Punch Her”, “Keep Calm and Grope On” and “Keep Calm and Choke Her.” Tasteful, guys!

After a lot of people made a lot of complaints over Facebook and Twitter, Amazon was forced to remove the t-shirts. Then Solid Gold Bomb, the US clothing brand that was manufacturing and selling them, made a comment on their Facebook page claiming that they had “no idea” that these were being printed and that the phrases had been “computer generated (from the dictionary)”. Uh, Solid Gold Bombshell, I’m pretty sure that shit still gets vetted before it goes on sale. Read my lips, SGB, Keep Calm and Keep Running. I’ma wear your skin as a t-shirt if you don’t.

HOW FREAKIN' FIERCE IS LION BABE?

Previously – Karl Lagerfeld's Feet Smell Like Bubblegum