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Arses for Africa

on July 20, 2009 7:14 PM | 11

 

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Can't believe no-one brought this little fundraising gimmick to my attention earlier. The manufacturers have the following helpful tip for getting your message across with this tasteful thong

Panty-minimalists love our casual thong that covers sweet spots without covering your assets; putting an end to panty-lines. This under-goodie is "outta sight" in low-rise pants.Toss these message panties onstage at your favorite rock star...

Indeed. I'm completely speechless, without a pun to hand. Any ideas?

(With thanks to Guy Gabriel's post on Making Sense of Darfur for flagging these beauties up)

11 Comments

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Victoria Luckie | July 21, 2009 8:22 AM | Reply

Are these for real? My first instinct was to find them offensive - but I am cheered by the thought of the person who pulls while wearing them!

(I do admit, in my younger days, to having worn pants with Che, Hepburn and guns on them.)

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Victoria Luckie | July 21, 2009 8:29 AM | Reply

"Passion Killer" maybe?

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martin g | July 21, 2009 9:49 AM | Reply

Horn of Africa... surely?

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Deontologist | July 21, 2009 4:20 PM | Reply

Correction: Your precious Guy Gabriel was NOT the first to write about these. We over at SDAP totally wrote about them back in April! Furthermore, I noted that the hits on our old April post increased slightly a couple days before Gabriel's article was published. I can't prove that he got the idea from my blog, but I like to think he did. In any event, he was not the first to flag these, we were.

http://savedarfuraccountabilityproject.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/response-to-dewaals-lighter-side/

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Rob Crilly replied to comment from Deontologist | July 21, 2009 7:10 PM | Reply

Blimey. No need to get your knickers in a twist, ahem. It was his post that alerted me to this gem.

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Deontologist replied to comment from Rob Crilly | July 21, 2009 10:47 PM | Reply

A "knickers" reference, even? Creative. How long did it take you to come up with that one?

You know what else? I just remembered that a SDAP blogger commented on Making Sense of Darfur and linked to our thong post, so Gabriel could've found it through that channel too.

http://blogs.ssrc.org/darfur/2009/04/27/lighter-moment-pushing-the-boundaries-of-public-awareness/

Do you think Gabriel realizes that this means war? 'Cause he should. In fact, this will undoubtedly go down in history as the Great Thong War of '09. I want to comment on his post, saying something like "If you don't confirm or deny that you heard about these thongs from us, we'll be forced to assume that you know about them because you wear them." Somehow, I doubt de Waal would approve such a comment for public view though.

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Rob Crilly replied to comment from Deontologist | July 21, 2009 11:02 PM | Reply

Now, now. The Internet is founded on hippy ideals of sharing knowledge freely - or nicking each other's ideas, depending on how you look at it - so let's play nicely

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Deontologist replied to comment from Rob Crilly | July 21, 2009 11:24 PM | Reply

I don't know much about hippy ideals. All I want is a hat tip if a hat tip is due.

Did anyone notice that the back of the thong has a smaller version of the image that's on the front? For some reason, that makes them even more hilarious to me. Maybe because it shows the designers' attention to detail, which is funny juxtaposed with their obliviousness to how inappropriate these things are.

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Guy Gabriel | July 22, 2009 10:56 AM | Reply

Allow me to wade into thonggate at this stage.

The thong first came to my attention via the Making Sense of Darfur blog "Pushing the Boundaries of Public Awareness".

http://blogs.ssrc.org/darfur/2009/04/27/lighter-moment-pushing-the-boundaries-of-public-awareness/

I am happy to tip my hat in whichever direction it is due; perhaps even to the person whose bright idea it was to market a Save Darfur thong in the first place. Unfortunately, the internet is not well-designed for hat-tipping; blog posts look weird when accompanied by full scholarly apparatus. Instead, the internet is very useful for bringing various things to the attention of others.

And for my money, "Horn of Africa" is the winner.


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Rob Crilly replied to comment from Guy Gabriel | July 22, 2009 1:03 PM | Reply

Great. Let's hear no more about. At the end of the day, it's not as if any of us actually invented the pants.

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Martin G | July 24, 2009 5:03 PM | Reply

Excellent - do I win? I'm a size large, thanks.

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