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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Fake Puma Blowjob Ads

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Matthew Fluxington

18:20 / 15.04.03

Someone has created convincing-looking fake Puma ads which are made to look as though young women are giving a man oral sex, complete with semen dripping down her leg.

There are two variations of the ad in circulation, they are both essentially the same, but the girl is wearing different outfits in each of them.

The ads are definitely fakes, according to Puma. Puma is very understandably seeking to sue, but no one is quite sure who to sue - they are starting by sending cease-and-desist notices to anyone hosting the images, but that won't necessarily stop the circulation of the images.

I think this is a particularly brilliant piece of subversive antagonistic anti-consumerist art. It is flawlessly constructed on the photo/design end, enough that I have no doubt that whoever did this is/are probably a well-known professional(s) with a lot of advertising experience.

I think it says EVERYTHING about modern advertising that so many people would just assume that those were real ads. These ads could be real before too long, at least in niche print advertising. Maybe without the cum, but maybe with the cum. It's definitely within the realm of possibility, and now that an idea like this has been planted, the meme could easily spread to a legit ad campaign.

I love the playful dark humor vibe of it - I'm always a sucker for anonymous DIY ad subversion and faking people out. It's an instant urban legend!

What do you think?

19:11 / 15.04.03

Seen 'em. But I'm still unconvinced it's not a clever double-bluff on the part of Puma. If you were trying to make a fake ad look real, you'd make sure the product looked box-fresh, right? And if you were trying to make a real ad look fake ...

'Cos you're right, the photos don't look amateur.

19:29 / 15.04.03

Hmm... funny, well designed and on point.

The ad agency that handles Puma as a client could, in my opinion, have tried something like this. My friend just started working for them and the cast of characters that works there is also responsible for tobacco ads, the bikini bandits franchise, and other things involving anti-art and Corey Feldman. Wonder if they were playing around in their spare time?

Matthew Fluxington

19:47 / 15.04.03

I should revise my comments: It is unlikely a person without formal photographic training could have shot those photographs. I've never shot a pro ad campaign (and probably never will), but I could conceivably shoot something that would look as slick and glossy because I've had a lot of studio photography training. A lot of people who I went to school with could easily shoot something as convincing as that, so it need not be an "inside job" by a rogue professional.

I honestly don't think Puma is pulling a double-bluff. If Puma was in fact responsible for the creation of the images, it may have been the prototype for a campaign which was never meant to be seen by anyone outside of Puma, the advertising company in charge of the project, some print consultants, and the folks involved with the creation of the image itself.

The products look 'box-fresh' to me, by the way.

21:18 / 15.04.03

Yes, you're right, it could easily be a prototype or a rejected pitch. It could also be a student's project.

But the woman's sneakers, especially in the first image linked, aren't squeaky-clean.

22:36 / 15.04.03

Mmm. Hot.

14:04 / 16.04.03

sans cum, i think those could definitely be used as actaul ads, suggestive pose and all. the chick is even super skinny, just like in all real ads! she should have swallowed, to get a little protein, har.
i think they're gross, btw. maybe w/o the cum they'd be ok i guess.

19:13 / 16.04.03

Oh yes, definitely - if it weren't for the cum they wouldn't be half as rude as many of the ads already out there - such as the Sophie Dahl one for Yves Saint Laurent, or her recent ones for Patrick Cox's Wannabe line (which I thought were atrocious). Half the perfume ads seem to be wet t-shirt ones these days (mumble mumble not like it was when I were a lass mumble mumble).

04:01 / 23.04.03

I'm pretty depressed by it which I hope is intention of the creator of the image.
I hope it is a swipe at the fashion advertisements which in selling the product cynically dictate, generate and use sexual submissiveness, abusing the sexual freedom of the permissive society. Those ads are worse than church.

15:47 / 23.04.03

Don't know if this might fan some flames, but I know that after tracksuits became popular with inner-city kids, Puma started marketing outfits like the yellow and black "Puma Kings" jogging suit... yellow and black being the colors of the Latin Kings.

So they're definitely not above guerilla/subculture marketing.

Tryphena Absent

18:04 / 23.04.03

I think they're fantastic images and don't have a problem with them. If I saw them on a billboard I wouldn't blink twice but really they look like a prototype for the kind of ad's that you get in club toilets. Of course I'm not sure I really appreciate them, all too aware that if I walk down Watford High Street on a Friday night I get to see the live action version. Basically these images represent an element of our society that we can't ignore and why anyone would want to keep everything nice and sweet is beyond me. But I regard that shot of Sophie Dahl for YSL to be one of the most perfect I've ever seen so perhaps I'm really not to be trusted.

18:07 / 23.04.03

great link, grant. that was way interesting and informative, especially since i live in chicago. the site is cool too; i like the stuff on female gangs.

18:20 / 23.04.03

anna~ i don't think you *are* to be trusted! if we are thinking of the same ad, she looked like a corpse and i even used that ad in a performance i did. it was a satirical piece wherein i pretended to be a special guest fashion commentator showing what was 'in' for the season. i showed slide after slide, telling the audience that it was very hip to look like you were: a statue, in pain, a pre-teen, dead, etc. there were *many* examples for each look. it was really funny (if i say so myself: the audiences laughed) but also disturbing: there were especially bad images cos i found some italian and french fashion magazines and may i generalize and say they're much worse than american ones.
trust me, i feel you in a sense; i don't think we should ignore the reality of our society, which does include girls giving head while wearing pumas, i'm sure, somewhere. but i don't think we need to see sooo much nitty-gritty, like cum on a knee?!? i don't think i sound all that puritanical when i say ick on seeing that in a magazine. (granted these are supposedly fake ads, but we're talking as if they were real.) also, as far as being 'real' and not ignoring different real aspects of society, it's interesting to ponder where 'telling it like it is' and reinforcing negative stereotypes/beliefs collide. yes, it's true that women sometimes get on their knees and give men blow jobs. but to put that out in the media, it also carries a connotation of female submissiveness, don't you think?

18:46 / 23.04.03

i'd also like to say that in porn they use ivory dishwashing liquid for cum.

21:26 / 23.04.03

Submissiveness? I dont think so... Id call it practicality. Come on, like Anna said, its not like we dont see it all the time, and i dont think its graphic enough to be offensive. I wouldnt really think twice if i saw it either. Its well done tho, so congratz to the makers

01:44 / 24.04.03

If the argument is that images such as these are permissible for use in advertisement because they represent a reality I think we're grossly misunderstanding the nature of advertising. Besides, there are be plenty of real social situations that it would be entirely inappropriate to use in advertising, generally we'd be talking scenes of abuse, also I imagine most of us would have a problem images that promote prejudice - something, it could be said, these particular images do promote since could be very easily argued that they are sexist.
And personally I'm not particularly fond of images that render blowjobs a fashion statement which these also probably do. Though of course, they would be a mere drop in that ocean of exploitation.

Tryphena Absent

02:36 / 24.04.03

I'm sorry but I really don't see what the problem is. Whether you want to view this as a representative image or something that reflects no reality at all there are just as many adverts featuring submissive men. I should be more concerned with the Flash adverts that currently grace our TV screens, they're far more disgraceful and pocket both men and women in to a nasty fantasy category, some stupid middle aged man hiding a good cleaning product from his wife is more dangerous then a bit of sperm on someone's leg.

The beauty of that YSL ad is the reference! The shot refers to the very nature of the fashion model as a piece of art, sculpture, a construct, there's a blatant pre-Raph Ophelia note there and it presents Sophie Dahl as a reworking of Venus. Models are chosen aesthetically as clothes horses. Creatures to be looked at and it isn't dependant on their sex. If the industry catered towards men a little more then the number of known male models would increase. It is sad that the Opium advert was banned, censored and locked away because we should be able to see a woman in that kind of pose. The reference is fascinating and if you're going to bitch about that advert which was, IMO, a photographic work of art then you might as well bitch about the Greek statues/casts in the V&A because the advert could only exist with that reference.

Tryphena Absent

02:40 / 24.04.03

Oh and I want to add that I think the general cultural perception that we have of fashion photography is wrong. It's an art form like any other, why do we relate it so repeatedly back to the models? It makes no sense- perhaps Picasso's Crying Woman is a terrible and maudlin representation of womanhood in modernity? A perfect representation of what the female should not be, of her repression and the constant pressure to be ridiculously skinny, hmm? Fashion photography is either 1)about fashion or 2)about advertising and the models are simply models in the true sense of the word.

04:46 / 24.04.03

Don't even get me started about photography as an art form!
It's a dull contrived mechanised prostitution of reality learned by talentless dandies who can't paint.
But that's a tirade for when I have more time on my hands.

12:37 / 24.04.03

Have you ever read Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"? Similar topic as far as photography goes, but I can't remember if he bothers with photography as an issue b/c it wasn't a dominant expression then.

Matthew Fluxington

12:46 / 24.04.03

Don't even get me started about photography as an art form!
It's a dull contrived mechanised prostitution of reality learned by talentless dandies who can't paint.
But that's a tirade for when I have more time on my hands.

It's always so quaint when you stumble upon an indignant hardcore pre-Modernist in the 21st century.

Movies suck too, right? Just paint a picture of a realistic landscape, you fuckers!

Tryphena Absent

14:19 / 24.04.03

Oh, lovely, what is this generalisation week on Barbelith? Photography is only as much a prostitution as a nineteenth century portrait. All art is contrived, planned, constructed and by your rather brief reckoning it would seem there is no art at all.

18:49 / 24.04.03

The shot refers to the very nature of the fashion model as a piece of art, sculpture
that's what bothers me.

anna, i don't think you can say that fashion photography is an art form like any other, because, as you said, Fashion photography is either 1)about fashion or 2)about advertising. most other art isn't like that. and i think people pay more attention to it because it's one of the art forms that presumes we will try, or at least desire, to emulate. and it's one that people see more of, as opposed to a painting in a museum--in fact, you can't avoid them if you try.
also i don't think there are just as many submissive poses performed by men in the media; there aren't even near as many images of men in the media as there are of women. you mentioned that the industry doesn't cater to men like it does to women, which is true. (then it becomes a chicken-and-egg thing to me; it makes me wonder if men would be more interested in fashion if only it was marketed more to them. but that's another story.) but women are used to sell things other than fashion much more than men--an excellent example is this one i noticed while at a sex shop: who's on the front of sex toy packages for men? women. who's on the front of sex toy packages for women? women.
i realized i'm sort of getting onto another subject here...my apologies.

Tryphena Absent

19:32 / 24.04.03

i don't think you can say that fashion photography is an art form like any other, because, as you said, Fashion photography is either 1)about fashion or 2)about advertising. most other art isn't like that

I agree but I don't think you can deny that photography, or even fashion photography, is an art form unlike any other. That's presumptuous and leads in to that whole 'what is art?' question that no one can actually answer. Photography is art.

Fashion has been slowly changing. Most people fail to realise that the first fashion magazine purely designed for men was created in the 1980's. A period of 20 years has passed since the fashion industry began to level itself out- that's very little time. Damn, women only started to wear trousers regularly in the '70s! Taken in that context these fake Puma ads and the fact that they're at all acceptable is remarkable.

19:49 / 24.04.03

excellent points about the relative newness of things, anna.

i think you *can* argue about different mediums being, well... different. it's not that they're not art, though. i'm not saying that. photography is art. hell, to me, most things are.

20:14 / 24.04.03

"most of us would have a problem images that promote prejudice - something, it could be said, these particular images do promote since could be very easily argued that they are sexist."

Can u imagine the uproar it it had been a guy giving a guy a blowjob?

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

22:20 / 24.04.03

Can u imagine the uproar it it had been a guy giving a guy a blowjob?

hmm, i wonder if i have that copy of photoshop 7 lying around somewhere...

01:44 / 25.04.03

All art is contrived, planned, constructed and by your rather brief reckoning it would seem there is no art at all.

I didn't say photography wasn't art, it's just poor, easy and boring art.
Now, it certainly isn't true that all art is contrived. The works of a handful of Neo-Dadaists and earlier Surrealists to one extent or another successfully avoid contrivance, say for example certain works of Johns and, I don't know... Giacometti. Since those works make no intended statement (or make one that is inadvertant), they generate a far more worthy truth than most other forms of art. Photography on the other hand, is completely about the contrived image, it's always only ever been selling somebody's idea of the truth.

also i don't think there are just as many submissive poses performed by men in the media;
Agreed, though I also get the impression those images of men that are submissive are very often ironic whereas many of those of women are not.

Matthew Fluxington

02:46 / 25.04.03

Your ideas about art are so quaint, D.

I think your obsession with 'truth' is very cute.

04:26 / 25.04.03

Just keepin' it real.
I wish I had time for artists whose approach to work is similar to that of interior designers, but I don't. But that's a different for a thread, probably one entitled, what kind of planks buy 'art' to hang in their living rooms?

09:25 / 25.04.03

Where better to hang it?

11:39 / 25.04.03

The most disturbing, tasteless, and offensive thing I can't help but find in these ads are...

The guy's snickers. They are way too prominently (no laugh intended) calling attention. If Puma had a some more formal line of shoes, I would have had them put to the guy in long pants. Otherwise, he should be wearing short pants... hanging by the knee of course.

Tryphena Absent

11:49 / 25.04.03

earlier Surrealists to one extent or another successfully avoid contrivance

Surrealism was short lived because there was so little that could be done with it. It became so unoriginal that the later work was always unavoidably contrived.

Photography on the other hand, is completely about the contrived image, it's always only ever been selling somebody's idea of the truth.

Why does this make it any less viable than surrealism, a form of art that died young because it was so green? Art has, historically and prior to the twentieth century, always been about selling somebody's idea of the truth. In the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries people demonstrated their property through portraits, in Renaissance work the Medici's sign often appeared over doorways, humans rewrite the truth through aesthetics. Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti's work entwined though the latter dealt purely in photography- would Kahlo, an artist who leant towards surrealism, agree with you??

14:13 / 25.04.03

[threadrot]
flux, you seem in such a bad mood lately. :/
[end threadrot]

21:13 / 25.04.03

Surrealism was short lived because there was so little that could be done with it. It became so unoriginal that the later work was always unavoidably contrived.

Maybe Anna, but when Surrealism lived!

Why does this make it any less viable than surrealism, a form of art that died young because it was so green?

Because the styles of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism that are less contrived may avoid the endless cyclical traps of cognitive deliberation, i.e. the lies we've told ourselves so many times we've ended up believing them. A less intentioned work can therefore tell a more basic, more real truth, the kind that innocent children tell. It perhaps does take rather a leap of faith to have confidence in this concept, I certainly wouldn't think anything less of any unbelievers.
Now it is true that for centuries art has been used as a tool for selling anything from politics to sheep, and true that doesn't necessarily negate the artistic merit of such work. But let us not pretend Modern Art does not exist, or ignore the freedoms it bore. Freedoms suppressed by the historic commercialisation of art. One would suppose those freedoms and their resultant work have always existed but have been suppressed since and before the dawn of art. And that is why extra value should be placed on non-contrived work, it is free from commercial or ideological suppression and coercion, it just is.

Harry potus and the basket of puppies,
I have a very healthy appreciaton for the technical requirements of photography, even come across them in my own strictly amatuer way. Perhaps earlier I rather over-amplified my view, still it is very restrictive medium, and largely a whore to commerce. I'd just like to think an aspiring artist would feel the need for the vast liberties of canvas, but more than that what I think shouldn't matter to them.

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