The Gautier design (on the right) goes back to the early 1990s. But surely the idea of a bottle shaped like a woman is older than that. What about the famous Coca-Cola bottle? Wasn't that designed to look like a woman's body? At the Coca-Cola website, I see the company wanted a distinctive bottle (so it could fight off trademark infringers — e.g., Koka-Nola, Ma Coca-Co, Toka-Cola, and Koke):
On April 26, 1915, the Trustees of the Coca-Cola Bottling Association voted to expend up to $500 to develop a distinctive bottle for Coca-Cola. So, eight to 10 glass companies across the U.S. subsequently received a challenge to develop a “bottle so distinct that you would recognize if by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground.”...Ah! So it wasn't a woman's body! It was a cocoa bean! But:
In Terre Haute, Indiana, the Root Glass Company received the brief and had a meeting to begin to work on their design. The Root team was composed of C.J and William Root, Alexander Samuelson, Earl Dean and Clyde Edwards. Samuelsson, a Swedish immigrant who was the shop foreman, sent Dean and Edwards to the local library to research design possibilities. When the team came across an illustration of cocoa bean that had an elongated shape and distinct ribs, they had their shape....
The Coke bottle has been called many things over the years. One of the more interesting of the nicknames is the “hobbleskirt” bottle. The hobbleskirt was a fashion trend during the 1910s where the skirt had a very tapered look and was so narrow below the knees that it “hobbled” the wearer. The bottle was also called the “Mae West” bottle after the actress’s famous curvaceous figure....It became a woman's body in the mind of the beholders. Whether you want to credit Coke or not, you've got to concede that Mrs. Butterworth beat Jean Paul Gaultier. We've been seeing this bottle since 1961:
To be fair to Gaultier, his bottle omits the head and just has the bottle cap on top of a torso, a design idea copied/arrived upon by Kim Kardashian's people. Mrs. Butterworth has a head, and the bottlecap goes on top of that head. The cap is a cap. To leave off the head and just put a cap at the neck... that's a bit disturbing, like the truly offensive "Bitchin' Bod" comic by R. Crumb:
For refreshment, this is a hobbleskirt:
And this is Mae West:
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52 comments:
Waiting for the incels and neckbeards to say Mae West had fat thighs.
Slightly on/off topic, but both the men's and women's version of Full Choke (ahem) is shaped unapologetically like a dick.
https://fimgs.net/images/secundar/o.11704.jpg
Fat thighs and wide hips.
"Alibaba.com offers 43 human body shaped perfume bottle of[sic] glass products. About 41% of these are bottles."
"Analysis of Interrelations between Bottle Shape and Food Taste"
"Message in a Bottle: What Anthropomorphized Package Designs Tell Consumers About Themselves"
"Costly Curves: How Human-Like Shapes Can Increase Spending"
@Caldwell Titcomb IV
Thanks!
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
neckbeards
Men with beards looking up. Scroll down a bit.
"Waiting for the incels and neckbeards to say Mae West had fat thighs."
1. Mae West had this to say about skinny women (in the 1930s): "I never saw so many poles in my life! I wondered how Hollywood men could stand them. But everyone said I had to get thin. I figured they knew this racket and I didn’t, so I went on one of them Hollywood diets…It was pretty bad, but I’d been through a lot for art’s sake so taking off twenty pounds or more was just one more piece of the routine. I got down to 103 pounds. I stood in front of the mirror to study the results. I didn’t like it. I didn’t look—well, you know, voluptuous. And that isn’t all, I didn’t even look healthy. And man or woman, you got to look healthy to look right. Half-starved women can’t have no life in them any more than a half-starved dog.” – from "Mae West: Empress of Sex."
2. Refer to the "Black Jeopardy" clip in the earlier post today. The answer, in the "big girls" category, is "what you can do with a skinny girl," and the question is "What is, not a damn thing."
The Gaultier bottle is a stylized torso. The Kardashian bottle is a cross between Venus de Milo and Venus of Willendorf.
I thought the Gautier design a bit classier than the naked female torso, until I noticed the crotch less cut. I guess you can grab either bottle by the pussy, except these look to be made for women and not big man hands.
I’ve said it before, but run, don’t walk, to see Terry Zwigoff’s documentary Crumb.
Xmas: The Kardashian bottle is a cross between Venus de Milo and Venus of Willendorf.
I was just getting ready to say that I kinda liked the Paleolithic vibe of the Kardashian bottle.
In order to copy the Gaulthier bottle, she'd have to be capable of looking at something other than herself. Seems unlikely.
If I was on the jury, I'd vote against the Capitalist with the most money.
Fresh blood, is the only way Democracy can survive.
That's why I think Copyrights and Patents should be gutted, as the longevity is now a joke and crony Capitalism. There should be no way you can patent software.
Ah, so the hobble skirt was a sneaky way of accenting certain areas.
Good thing we've gotten rid of corsets and Hobble skirts. Truth in advertising laws have done their magic.
Never been a Mae west fan.
But no one likes the angular look - unless you want a fashion rack. We want the curves in all the right places.
I despise current intellectual property law. Even if Gautier was first, they don't have rights over the female figure or how to use it. The whole field is an abomination (and mostly unconstitutional).
Ahhhhh Mae West...... now that's a fine example of a whole lotta woman!!
Judge: "Young lady, are you trying to show contempt for this Court?"
Ms West: "No, I am doing my best to hide it!"
Early Pepsi bottles reminded me of the guy in gym class that was always catching a swirly in the toilet bowl.
Schaperelli "Shocking" from 1930's. https://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Schiaparelli/Shocking-4876.html
"what you can do with a skinny girl,"
Yeah....but it makes finding the right wrinkle a hole lot easier. Ya' know wut I mean??
the mother-of-three, 37,
How many low blows can they fit in one sentence?
The hobble skirt looks like a birth control device, but she had to use a catheter.
As they say in more sensual cultures than ours, "The bone is for the dog. The meat is for the man."
Man, Crumb is a misogynist!
Looks like it would be hard to run on a bottling line.
John Henry
That Gaultier bottle looks like a Vargas girl.
Kim K's not so much.
"A hard man is good to find." --Mae West
I have an antique outboard motor they call a "Mae West". It is a 1937 Waterwitch by Sears manufactured in Hartford, Wisconsin by the Kissel Motor Company. The motor has twin gas tanks with a profile that caused it to be called the "Mae West".
Waterwitch Mae West
Dom Perignon Releases Lagerfeld-designed Champagne Coupe Modeled on Claudia Schiffer's Breast
That headline's a mouthful.
SNL: Uncle Jemimah's Pure Mash Liquor
You know they used to call a life preserver, the kind you'd wear on a boat, a "Mae West". When I was a young teen-ager or pre-teen, my father used that term for a life vest, and I asked him what it meant. He did his best to explain it. I've been interested in boobs ever since.
But I don't want to make this comment political.
In case anybody doesn't get Hagar's reference to Vargas girls.
Emphatically NSFW. There are books of Vargas artwork available on Amazon. Be sure to use the Althouse portal.
I've seen the Gautier chick-torso perfume bottle before, and now there is the Kardashian chick-torso perfume bottle, and I notice that they always take the picture of the bottles from a front angle. Like, they don't want you to get a good look at the bottle's ass, I guess. Which doesn't make much sense to me because the ass is a pretty good part of a lot of chicks.
And Kim Kardashian is pretty much known for her ass. I mean, what does she show in her pictures on Instagram and shit? Her ass. What position was she in for most of her sex tape? Face Down Ass Up. So you would think the bottle would be, like, a celebration of her ass, but maybe that's why I don't work in advertising, I think almost all packaging would work better if it reminded you of a hot chick's ass.
And maybe the chicks who buy perfume don't want Kim's ass, like, in their face and shit. Because maybe it makes them all self-conscious of their own ass, which may be flat or pimply or saggy and shit, and now they won't buy the perfume because they don't like being reminded of their own sad ass. Which is pretty sad, too, because chicks are more than just their ass sometimes.
I mean, I don't expect her perfume bottle to be herself spreading her ass cheeks and showing her asshole, but, like, maybe she could've gone half-way. Except if she was spreading her ass cheeks and showing her asshole she would need hands, and then it's not just a torso anymore, and that probably fucks up the artistic statement of a chick having no legs or arms or a head or shit.
But I bet if you were to sell, like, an action figure of Kim Kardashian you better be able to make it spread its ass cheeks and show its asshole, because otherwise what's the point? I mean, in that case it's just another chick-doll that pretends that chick-dolls aren't about sex. Before you get all offended and shit, I'm talking about adult chick-dolls here: baby-girl dolls are for little girls to pretend to be a mommy and shit, which doesn't have anything to do with sex.
I post my shit here.
The Gautier is elegant, the Kardashian is crude.
Kate Hepburn was thin. “Not much meat on her but what there is is cherce.”
Anheuser-Busch Michelob?
I remember when trans sonic jets had a squeezed fuselage that was called the Marilyn Monroe shape as it reduced drag just aft of the wings
This allowed transsonic planes to get supersonic with no more engine power.
Airplanes that designers hoped would be supersonic were thus sometimes limited to sonic speed as a result of unexpectedly high transonic drag. Whitcomb showed that the hump in the area curve' and thus the high transonic drag, could be eliminated if the added area contributed by the wing was balanced by a deliberate reduction in the cross-sectional area of the fuselage at the wing juncture. The resulting fuselage shape had a constriction like a Coca-Cola bottle, and the terms "coke bottle" or "Marilyn Monroe" fuselage were often heard.
It was also called a "coke bottle " shape.
Mae West knew exactly what she could get away with between the government censors and the studios behind them. Mae and WC Fields worked out much before and during their filming. The fact that WC was able to film his 'Dentist' sketch shows his understanding of the limits.
TaB Cola produced drinking glasses in the '70's which looked like a stylized woman's figure. 7-Up responded with a glass that resembled a pear-shaped woman.
Mike K,
I've known of the Area Rule for many decades, but never knew the "Monroe" name for it.
Sometimes a fuselage is just a fuselage.
I hope that my 8:48 attempt at humor was saccharine.
Also, I should add, that Fields thought of Mae as an equal on set, if not better as far as marketing went. The letters between the two are interesting. Fields was almost always asking for her input on certain scenes, making sure she was willing to play to his take, or whether he should defer to hers. I think they eventually just worked a lot of ad lib scenes (with both half in the bag) and said 'print'.
This is one of Ann's greatest posts, joining her quirky erudition and humor to her bemused bafflement about the now.
Mrs. Butterworth! Come on!
Ann, it's a masterpiece.
"Fields was almost always asking for her input on certain scenes, making sure she was willing to play to his take, or whether he should defer to hers."
Yeah, because men ALWAYS have to act that way - when women are involved.
If you don't, they cry or call you a bully/sexist/whatever.
If Fields had treated Mae West - like a man, and just tried to make the best picture possible, he would've had a lot of "White Knights" attacking him, not to mention West and her "sisters" crying sexism.
So, Fields took the smart, and easy way out.
Best W.C. Fields Quotes:
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
never knew the "Monroe" name for it.
Sometimes a fuselage is just a fuselage.
One of the few benefits of age. We remember stuff. It was a big deal about the time of the F 102 which they could get supersonic.
You can use your own name in your ads. So what if another seller named "Smith" sold a product that another Smith wants to sell. If a Kardashian can use her own woman's body to sell a product, so what if another seller used their body shape to sell a product?
This is an issue of fact requiring an all male jury.
the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...What position was she in for most of her sex tape? Face Down Ass Up.
--
Obvious placement for the emitter...
Tim Conway Jr on KFI has a funny radio bit about the sound that occurs when the Kardashian perfume box is opened.
When I was a boy (that is about 60 years ago), my mother had a set of small perfume bottles that were modeled after the female torso. Not sure when/where my father got them for her. He was active duty Navy and he could have purchased them anywhere. In any case, that was long before Gaultier's bottle was designed.
The best example of an area rule fuselage was the B-58. Sexy.
Mae West, man, just a century before her time. You gotta believe those censors of the time were saying no,no,no!....but wanted to see more, hear more, and laugh more too,so it was yes,yes,yes!!
Notice how elegant the Gaultier bottle is, the color, the soft curves, the fact that it is clearly a woman not naked, but wearing elegant undergarments, vs. the gauche, ugly Kardasian version of a naked woman with in a hideous color.
My grandmother designed a perfume bottle that won a contest and was manufactured for White Shoulders perfume. It was the head and shoulders of a woman leaning to one side; the perfume bottle went into the base with a spray of plastic flowers. Department stores in New York sold them. I imagine this was the forties or fifties. They needed the pin money.
She also sculpted a bas-relief JFK and won a contest: that sculpture was minted as a coin.
She didn't consider herself an artist, but she was a much better artist than anyone I have ever met who lives in a loft. I wish I could find one of those old bottles.
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