Models in ads: they're all jumping now! [Copyranter]

Posters for Cabana Cachaca, a brand of Brazilian rum that is determined to bully its way into the market through sheer advertising mass, are plastered all over Manhattan. But they're cropped so that the model is just barely free of nipple (a body part banned in the USA). But the posters direct you to the company's website where-in a keen display of digital marketing strategy-you can see the model's nipple (Copyranter made sure of it). I think they've hit on a solid online agenda here. Click through for the (NSFW) uncensored version of the ad. None of this contributes to high quality rum, as if you cared:

Ladies, have a look at this ad featuring skinny supermodel Kate Moss. How does it make you feel? Wait, let me tell you how it makes you feel: it makes you hate your own body, but really want to purchase that handbag Kate Moss is advertising! What am I, psychic? No, I'm just telling you what the advertising industry has discovered in a breakthrough new study about skinny models. Women love to hate themselves and keep coming back for more, apparently! The actual, scientific study found that "ads featuring thin models made women feel worse about themselves but better about the brands featured." They make you despise your own "normal" body, and subconsciously try to correct the situation with therapy consisting of shopping. Oh, the pretty girls have all the pretty brands! A Villanova professor who ran the study ferreted out just what advertisers bank on: masochism. ""The really interesting result we're seeing across multiple studies is that these thin models make women feel bad, but they like it," he said. The advertising industry always knew you were a bad, bad girl. And in the most entertaining twist to this whole thing, the study also found that images of skinny models make women stop eating. Surprise!:

It must really kill Dov Charney not to be able to advertise his hipster robot clothes via hardcore porn movies starring himself and a bevy of 18-year-old Eastern European beauties recently unloaded from a shipping crate in the dead of night. So the pervy American Apparel CEO and hero to the downtrodden keeps edging as close to that vision as possible. His latest effort: a foreign ad featuring a model licking some dude's boxer shorts-and some believe the dude in them is Dov himself, based solely on the hairy legs. Full ad that will haunt you, below:

A-list stars are extremely selective about how they're portrayed in pictures. They routinely have specific language in their contracts for movies and photo shoots dictating just how much flesh can be shown, and in what way. But magazines have figured out a way around this: get one of the world's most prominent photographers to do the shoot, and hey, the stars let it all hang out! New York got Lindsay Lohan to strip for Bert Stern, the photographer who once shot Marilyn Monroe in the same poses. And Vanity Fair used Annie Leibovitz's cachet to goad the young Miley Cyrus into a creepy come-hither pose. And now, sadly, supermodel and man-curse Gisele Bundchen has fallen victim to the same trend. Oh no!

The feel-good issue of Italian Vogue featuring all black models in honor of Obama is about to hit the newsstands, washing away the last remnants of racial strife in the world. But some people are asking: why do they have to do the all-black issue during the slowest time of the year for magazines? Why not put it out in the busy season and really make a statement? We hate to even suggest it, but could it have something to do with... money?

The news media has been totally transfixed by the suicide of Ruslana Korshunova, the 20-year-old Kazakhstan native who jumped nine stories to her death this weekend, possibly on account of boyfriend troubles. The combination of gorgeous girl and grisly death is a winning one, at least as far as selling papers and generating TV ratings goes. But Korshunova is hardly the first model to go from the catwalk to the morgue (or to become front-page tabloid news for some terribly unfortunate incident). In fact, fate kind of seems to have it out for models. A roundup of model industry tragedies below.

Mayoral aspirant and Queens Congressman Anthony Weiner is pushing a bill that would provide 1,000 extra visas a year. To models. Could Weiner be hoping for a little action from these hotties of foreign extraction? He already has a serious girlfriend! If nothing else, it can't hurt his chances of locking up a Bill Clinton endorsement in 2009. [NY Post]

You'll be kicking yourself for missing this party in an LA American Apparel store last Friday. It was not just an event in honor of gay pride; it included a contest to "win" a chance to "Show Your Stuff" in an American Apparel ad. "Winner chosen @ Stallion after party." Isn't that how it always turns out? Dov Charney continues to find new and innovative ways to trick dudes and girls alike into helping him skeeve out the world. The full flier, with NSFW lime green underwear shot, after the jump.

Tom Ford is using nudity in his advertising! Hard to believe, I know. Mr. Ford may be one of the world's most influential designers, but his latest ads have largely completed the evolution from provocative to simply boring. Which is a difficult stunt to pull off, considering the subject matter. But these three spots, starring Brazilian Alex Schultz, are so in-your-face that they lose the sense of allure which should, ideally, accompany any fashion ad—penis-showing or otherwise. Also hard to pull off when using naked people: making your target audience think about clothes. See the disconnect there? We're ready for the cultural needle to swing back towards fully clothed models, thank you. After the jump, the three ads—which are all, predictably, NSFW.

Legendary literature magazine The Paris Review is still publishing, you know, despite the death of founding editor George Plimpton and the requisite identity crisis that followed changes introduced by new editor Philip Gourevitch (color photos! shorter poems!). One thus far unmentioned change: while the magazine used to be put together entirely by a small crew of Plimpton friends, protégés, and well-groomed young acolytes (Yale-graduate interns and "editorial assistants" who'd use the magazine's famous parties to establish themselves in the literary scene, such as it was), now their staff is branching out a bit from that rarefied Ivy League lit-mag milieu. At least in the case of the notorious American Apparel Model Paris Review intern.

Natasha Collins-the British former model who starred in the TV show See It, Saw It, and who a coroner's report revealed was scalded to death in her bathtub in January while she had more than five times the lethal dose of cocaine in her system-left behind a fiance who went missing in London six days ago. His body was found today "in a remote spot at Paddington railway station. Officers said he was not struck by a train." The boyfriend, children's TV presenter Mark Speight, disappeared days after appearing at Collins' inquest looking "drawn and gaunt."

The nude photo of French first lady Carla Bruni in her supermodel days sold at Christie's yesterday for $91,000, which was a bit better than its estimated price of $4,000. Some connoisseurs said the photo, by a lesser-known artist, wasn't that great, but maybe they missed the naked supermodel in it. Janet Jackson's iconic Rolling Stone cover shot brought only $10,000, but her boobs were covered up in that one, so it's understandable. The nude Gisele Bundchen picture brought $193,000 (estimate: $40,000). But the highest earner of the night was Helmut Newton's "Naked and Dressed" diptych, which sold for $241,000. We bring it to you for free, after the jump—NSFW, in an artsy way.

Las Vegas: where every imaginable tactic of sex-related extortion will eventually become a business plan. Are you a rich, lecherous man who enjoys escort services as well as golfing, and are frustrated at your inability to combine the two? Well wait no longer, because The Platinum Tees are here to take care of your leering needs. The PT's are essentially a bunch of models from an agency in Vegas, with one key difference: they have been "put through rigorous training" to learn how to be golf caddies. Yes, they "know the difference between a putter and wedge, take care of your ball, clean your clubs, drive your cart, fix divots, tend the pin, and most importantly keep you smiling!" I bet they do.

Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, a chimp-rights group, is assailing Sports Illustrated with a vicious letter-writing campaign! The group is upset that the magazine used a macaque (FANCY WORD FOR "MONKEY") and a bear in its photo shoot for this year's Swimsuit Issue [Folio]. S.I. is like, whoa! We take care of the animals, and besides, what mammal wouldn't be happy nestled up against the thighs of a swimsuit model? The two bear/ model-relations pictures, which have caused all the human outrage, after the jump. The bear does look kind of annoyed by that muzzle.

Natasha Collins, a former model who starred in a British children's TV show called "See It, Saw It," was found dead in a bathtub in January. Today, a coroner's report said that she died by being scalded to death in the hot bathwater, and that she had "Five times the potentially fatal amount of cocaine" in her system at the time. She and her fiancee—whom she met while he was working on another kids show—had been partying at home alone when she died. Collins wasn't always in costume; after the jump, a few of her normal modeling shots.

Nick Snider is very young and oddly gorgeous — that's probably why at 19, he's already a top model, posing for Prada and others! Unfortunately, he ruins it with his nasty attitude, showcased on YouTube and aimed towards that scourge of modern society, "haters." Example: "Maybe you're just like, old and ugly... or, maybe you just don't have the body for [modeling.]" Also? "Seriously, who uses LiveJournal anymore? Nooobody fuckin' 'uses Livejournal." Update: Damn! Video deleted in record time. We found a way better one: it involves lip-synching to Miley Cyrus, but he's still talking about haters!

Oh former models like Veronica Webb. Please stop going around saying and writing things. Know why? You're dumb and people don't like you. Ms. Webb was blogging about how she would give Ashley Dupree, one of former Governor Eliot Spitzer's many call girls, a makeover when a bout of the very-stupids overtook her. For instance, saying that Dupree's "almond-shaped blue eyes are her best feature." Dupree, of course, has smokey brown eyes."Every king eventually meets his Beowulf," Webb observes. "Some survive and some don't." What do you suppose the commenters did with this?

A site called The New Enthusiasm, which has been raising a ruckus around the web for the last few days with its fake Marc Jacobs ads, has been outed as the work of a creative agency named Hart + Larsson. It was obvious, since Marc Jacobs won't really start using unkempt, out-of-shape, bearded male models in wigs for at least another year or two. [Agenda Inc.]

At least it wasn't a blackberry. Stalker says she was at NYU's Wasserman Center for Career Development when Iman complained that she had to talk for a whole hour. Given, models are not known for their elocution. Sez Iman was a a total "bi-otch"—the closest I've seen to actually calling someone a biotech. Maxim's style guide says it should be beeyotch. How do you spell it? Sighting after the jump.