Barbidization of America

As said in the above mentioned posts, S. California particularly has an obsession with obtaining perfection, but that can lead to very dangerous places and not only in S. California. A news report last week told of a Korean woman who injected her face with cooking oil when she ran out of silicon. She wound up looking like she had a severe case of elephantiasis.

Madonna has also had some of her own fixing's up and
there have been horrendous pictures of her post-procedure. She, as Susan
Bordo states, is not what she initially set out to be, one who scoff's
in the face of patriarchal conformity. Although I never thought she did
anything revolutionary, she just happened to have a soapbox to project
what many women in the sex industry have done for ages. Only she brought
their image to young girls to emulate. Go Madonna!

Youth, Style, Re'sistance

I am certainly part of a subculture, it's funny though because I am not
die-hard or fanatical about the scene, I just personally love the style.
But here is a link to a site where the die-hards hang out and cheese
about. This is where the Kitten 66 joke comes in. The joke touches on
how when people get into the whole subculture thing they can become so
completely immersed in being different and relish in their unusualness,
but really there's a total saturation and their oddity has become
commonplace.

www.rockabillyfever.com

On a similar note, I find the - for instance - punk scene to have
started with very good intentions. You know, eff the government and
anarchy rules, but a virus has come about and threatened to change all
that... It's called Hot Topic and a punk documentary said that it gave
way for saturation and thus a corporate spin and complete alteration of
what it means to be thumbing your nose at the very institutions that are
now making money off the punk scene. It's interesting how capitalism
finds a way to make money off the anti-capitalists.

Translation over the Internet

I thought this was a perfect example of how even though we may be
genderless, ageless, etc over the internet, we still struggle with
translation. Here is an email I was sent that illustrates... I
personally like the chicken slogan :/


The world is smaller. The internet has done that.
But language still poses many barriers.
What I say and what you hear may not always be the same.
Don't believe me? Buy a product made overseas and read the English
translation of the instructions.
Need more examples? These marketing failures may help to illustrate . . .

1. Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose", into Spanish, where it was
read as "Suffer from diarrhea".

2. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an
American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

3. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into German only
to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use
for the "manure stick".

4. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same
packaging as in the U.S., with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the
label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put
pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read.

5. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a
notorious porno magazine.

6. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish
market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el
Papa), the shirts read "I saw the potato" (la papa).

7. Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi
brings your ancestors back from the grave", in Chinese.

8. Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "it takes a strong man to make a
tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man
to make a chicken affectionate".

9. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", meaning
"Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on
the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic
equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le", translating into "happiness in the mouth".

10. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were
supposed to have read, "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you."
Instead, the company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate)
meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and
make you pregnant."