• Change! Stately old American Vogue is apparently seeking to revamp itself. Says Wayne Sterling, the mag wants "a new circle of models, an influx of fresh, young photographers and a desire for 'unpredictability' in the stories." Unpredictability. In Vogue. [TI]

• Marc Jacobs has added two pro-marriage equality t-shirts to his Marc by Marc line. One shows a line drawing of a lesbian couple with a child, and the other shows an American flag and a dollar sign; both have the tag line "I pay my taxes, I want my rights." The tees cost $24 and are available now. Jacobs is of course looking forward to his own gay marriage, in Massachusetts, later this summer. [PerezHilton]
• Jacobs, along with Patti Smith and David Rockwell, has been named one of the Pratt Institute's Legends of 2009. [WWD]
• Madonna wears diamond dust on her eyes. For that extra sparkly something. [People]
• Patrick Demarchelier shot Gossip Girl's Taylor Momsen in Central Park for the September cover of Teen Vogue. [TFS]
• The Kaiser's Chanel accessories ads featuring Lily Allen, who recently launched her own jewelry line, are also out. She wears a tiara in one; in another, she looks like she's hiding behind a carry-all. [FWD]
• Amanda Hearst, the model/heiress, is rumored to have been offered a job sinecure at Hearst-owned Marie Claire. [P6]
• More details are emerging about the only bid for the house of Lacroix that the bankrupt company's administrator has yet deemed "serious": Italian department store company Borletti had bid jointly with Christian Lacroix himself. Borletti bought the Printemps department store chain from Pinault-Printemps-Redoute in 2006, and owns the Italian department store La Rinescente jointly with Deutsche Bank. French turnaround firm Bernard Krief Consulting made a bid that the administrator described as "insufficient" for the fashion house, and which it has promised to revise upwards. No dollar values for these bids has been revealed. [Reuters]
• Maybe one way Christian Lacroix could make a little cash would be licensing his name to an unaffiliated uniforms division, since that's exactly what Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga did. Air Tahiti Nui sent out a very happy press release yesterday announcing the introduction of its brand-spanking-new Balenciaga uniforms — but further investigation has revealed that the gear was made under license by a uniform company using the Balenciaga name. Our visions of flying with space-age Ghesquière creations were crushed. [The Moment]
• The rumors were true: Coach is launching — and fully funding — a signature line for its creative director, Reed Krakoff. The designer's eponymous accessories collection will launch for Fall '10. [WWD]
• This is despite the fact that Coach suffered a 32% decline in quarterly profits for the period ended June 27. Net income fell from $213.5 million last year to $145.8 million. [WWD]
• Rachel Roy and Estelle are working together on a jewelry line. Roy announced this via Twitter. [WWD]
• Zappos earned $10.7 million from total sales of $635 million worth of sales last year, according to new owner Amazon's SEC filing. [TBI]
• New York City charity HousingWorks, which sells used clothing and furniture and donates its profits to fund AIDS and homelessness, has been doing great business in the recession — understandable, considering so many of their offerings are designer. Susan Sarandon, Bill Clinton, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Chloé Sevigny, as well as, one presumes, a whole slew of regular well-dressed folk, all recently donated clothes and goods. [NYObs]
• Bravo, still reeling from the loss of Project Runway, is launching another fashion-themed reality show: Launch My Line. The concept pairs new designers with established industry lights in order to develop the youngsters' businesses — the best mentee gets his or her line launched, and the best mentor gets $50,000. It all unfolds under the watchful eye of hosts Dean and Dan Caten, of DSquared2, and judges Stefani Greenfield, formerly of retail chain Scoop, and Lisa Kline. [FabSugar]
• Profits at the multinational luxury company LVMH, which owns everything from Louis Vuitton to Dior to Sephora, dropped 23% in the first six months of this year, to 687 million euros, or $934.3 million, from 891 million euros, or $1.39 billion, a year earlier. Sales during the same period rose 0.2% on a year earlier. The top performing brands was Sephora, and Louis Vuitton handbag sales remained strong. [WWD]
• Maybe, just maybe, one reason profits are down is the fact that Louis Vuitton is trying to sell a $450 USB key? Hermès, in any case, is jumping on the lux-tech bandwagon with a bluetooth device "made of super lightweight carbon fiber, aluminum and supple leather ... [with a] custom-built silicon earring." [Racked]
• Men's control underwear is still being talked about as if it's a new idea. It isn't. [Telegraph]

• At last, a celebrity with a realistic outlook on her whatever-line: "Unless you need it, it's just stuff," says Alicia Silverstone of her collaboration with Ecotools. [WWD]

• Paris has a Musée de la Contrefaçon, where counterfeit and genuine goods are lined up and displayed, side-by-side. Everything from the predictable (Dior handbags) to the slightly insane (Tabasco sauce) to the downright worrisome (pregnancy tests) has been knocked off; France estimates the trade in counterfeits costs its economy 38,000 jobs and $85 billion. A museum that looks like a Noah's ark of consumer goods would be an awesome place to visit. [LATimes]
• Counterfeiting is big business in Los Angeles. Vendors of counterfeit goods are so canny they have even memorized the plate numbers of undercover cops, and some labels hire private investigators to police the trade in markets like Santee Alley. The Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation estimates that L.A.-based companies lost $5.2 billion to counterfeiters in 2005. [LATimes]
• The concept for Victoria Beckham's next campaign for her dress line apparently involves models on swings — so Posh joined the models, and sat expressionless on a rope swing. [Daily Mail]
• Jennifer Lopez's new scent, "My Glow," was apparently inspired by motherhood. [WWD]
• NeNe from the Real Housewives Of Atlanta wants a shoe line. [E!]
• Ole Schell, the co-director of Picture Me, the excellent documentary about the modeling industry, talks about the film's genesis and how it was made. [DazedDigital]
• They're out there! Some two-bit pressure group calling itself the "Australians In New York Fashion Foundation" had its inaugural dinner on Wednesday. Because no matter where you go in this world, there's always an Australian there to look like she's having more fun than you are! I'm going to sob into my mug of Edgelets, wish for some Molenberg with Anchor butter, and re-research my ironclad argument about the origins of the remarkable New Zealand dessert, the Pavlova. [WWD]
• Juergen Teller's new campaign for Marc Jacobs features some very young models — Irina Kulikova is just 17 — in some very American Apparel-esque poses. [The Cut]
• Korean Vogue has a cover in triplicate this month, featuring Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, and Eva Herzigova. [FWD]
• Re-familiarize yourself with Mademoiselle Chanel in this extensive and well-written article ahead of the release of Coco Avant Chanel. [ToL]
• Who knew that Erin Wasson had a film career? She's got a walk-on role in Sophia Coppola's next movie, Somewhere. Her character? "Party Girl No. 1." [The Cut]
• Beauty chain Ulta has 331 stores nationwide, and is giving Sephora, with 230 U.S. outposts, a run for its money. Unlike Sephora, Ulta doesn't shy away from selling drugstore makeup, like Maybelline and L'Oréal — but it still offers attentive customer service and plentiful samples. Prestige brands are also well represented. Many branches have hair salons inside. Ulta is also expanding like kudzu in this real estate market: It opened 65 stores last year. [NYTimes]
• Once the Economist is on to "pop-up" stores, they're seriously not "unusual" anymore. [Economist]
• Yes, our primary concern in this market when luxury brands are forced to price their handbags at $4,445 instead of $4,900 should be the long-term ability of those brands to hike prices to $5,200 in the near future. Give us a fucking break. [BW]
• Moody's has downgraded C.E.O.-less troubled retailer Barney's New York. Again. By two whole notches. To Caa3, which is just one stop above Ca, which is for securities that "are likely in, or very near, default, with some prospect of recovery of principal and interest." [WWD]
• Some sources are saying that Zappos wanted to remain independently owned, but was actually forced to sell itself to Amazon by venture capitalists who had invested in the company. [BusinessJournals]
• Zappos C.E.O. Tony Hsieh is denying these reports. [TBI]
• A bunch of New York fashion bloggers want us to all stop shopping. Seriously, just stop it! [Racked]

Since Napoleon Chagnon's landmark 1988 study of the Yanomamo tribe of Venezuela, it's been assumed that aggressive and violent behavior was the key to power, and that men who demonstrated such behaviors ended up the top dogs, with more wives and children. Or, as several headlines insist on cheesily, patronizingly, and oddly putting it, they "get the girl." But a new study of the similarly warlike Waorani of the Amazon basin has strikingly different results. In essence, "Warriors Do Not Always Get The Girl."

The Waorani are rainforest manioc horticulturalists and foragers. Their position in the Amazon is an enviable one that attracts a lot of others, and the Waorani are said to be notorious for killing outsiders vying for resources, with murder also fairly commonplace within the tribe. This appalled the missionaries who encountered the indigenous people in 1959 and quickly set about trying to eradicate the violence of the Waorani's traditional culture, but today it's still the South American tribe with the highest recorded murder rate (in the past five generations 42 percent of deaths of both men and women resulted from murder) and as such an irresistible subject to those anthropologists interested in studying aggression in society. Contrary to old suppositions, says Penn State's Stephen Beckerman, who interviewed people in 23 settlements, the most violent and aggressive members of the tribe have fewer wives and children than Beta males. Oddly, the children of more violent men were found to have shorter life spans.

The reasons for the difference aren't clear - the researchers cite "cultural differences" and "cycles of aggression." But, um, what about the fact that the resources that were the basis of their existence - and the cause of most violence - have been destroyed? After all, their homeland is highly at risk of oil exploration and illegal logging. And isn't some of this just a natural consequence of the eradication of an ancient culture? While portions of the community have held steadfastly to old ways, retreating from society, it's also true that a large number now live as Christians. If the shift means the saving of lives, one can't help but feel ambivalent, but surely anthropology as we and Barbara Pym knew it can't really be studied in a vacuum? But as a green shoot of human nature hope in a violent world? Sure, we'll take what we can get.

Turns Out Tough Guys Get The Girls [NBC]
Warriors Do Not Always Get The Girl [Science Daily]

For those of you who spent Easter Sunday with your families instead of the Internet (and what is wrong with you?), the scandal began to break when writer Mark Probst posted that he found that his book The Filly, a teen gay romance, had been stripped of its sales rank by Amazon. This de-ranking can have serious effects for a book and its author — some de-ranked books don't even show up in searches. An Amazon customer service rep explained that "we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature." Users then began to hunt for books that Amazon considered "adult," and came up with some pretty weird results, including Heather Has Two Mommies, Ellen DeGeneres: A Biography, and James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. Now, according to Publisher's Weekly, Amazon claims the de-ranking does not represent new policy and is in fact a mistake they're working to fix. Oopsie!

Not buying this explanation is, oh, the whole Internet. Salon's Broadsheet asks why Probst got the "adult material" explanation if this was just a mistake, and why another author, Craig Seymour, noticed that his book was de-ranked back in February. Dear Author notices that all the de-ranked books have certain category tags in common (like "gay," "lesbian," or "sex"), and wonders if either a hacker or a clumsily-implemented Amazon filter simply stripped rank based on the tags. Livejournal blogger tehdely speculates that a group of vigilante users may have gotten a number of books tagged as adult simply by repeatedly complaining about them, in a grassroots effort he dubs "Bantown." This is certainly possible — we wouldn't put it past an Amazon customer service rep to glance at a book's category and dash off an email calling it "adult," without checking how it got that way.

In fact, someone calling himself "brutal honesty" is now claiming that he used a relatively simple hack, and a team of helpers, to mass-report gay and lesbian books as "inappropriate," all because he was mad that Craigslist wouldn't let him advertise for "chicks to do heroin with." Once the books in question received enough complaints, Amazon would de-rank them. His tactics sound plausible, but his anonymous claim could well be a hoax (and at least one livejournal user says it is). And of course, Amazon would still have to cooperate by stripping sales rankings from "inappropriate" books, so even a brutal-honesty hack wouldn't leave them blameless.

So is Amazon really fixing the problem? Sort of. Take that notorious "adult" title Heather Has Two Mommies. Last night, when I typed the search term "two mommies" (at 11:14 PM Central Time, according to my chat history), I got (and here I quote myself) "random stuff, including a different book about lesbian moms." Searching for "heather has two mommies" got me some out-of-print and/or unavailable versions of the book — it looked like Amazon just didn't carry it. This morning, Heather is back, along with its sales rank. Still unranked, as of 10:10 AM Central Time, are Ellen Degeneres: A Biography, James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Full Frontal Feminism, and Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl.

Many of these books, it's worth noting, still don't show up in a front-page search (a front-page search for Ellen's book at 10:16 AM, for instance, yielded this as its first hit, as opposed to the standard edition of the book) — for the less-committed Amazon customer, it's like they don't exist. Whether or not Amazon intended to keep us from buying evil gay propaganda, the debacle does reveal something disturbing about our reliance on online bookstores. At least in books-and-mortar stores you have to actually burn the books to keep them away from people — on Amazon, you can just make them invisible.

On the flipside, though, the interwebs give defenders of literature and gay rights new tools, like, say, Amazon user tags. Firedoglake's La Figa reports that Amazon visitors are fighting back, adding user-generated tags like "bdsm" and "big homo propaganda" to "non-adult" books like A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. And when I visited the page for Ellen Degeneres: A Biography at 10:26 AM, it had just one user-generated tag: "amazonfail."

Amazon Says Glitch to Blame for "New" Adult Policy [Publisher's Weekly]
Amazon Follies [Mark R. Probst]
Why did gay books disappear from Amazon? [Broadsheet]
On Amazon Failure, Meta-Trolls, and Bantown [tehdely]
This Is Not A Glitch, #amazonfail [Lilith Saintcrow]
Amazon Using Category MetaData to Filter Rankings [Dear Author]
Cheney and Lesbians!?: Tag Teaming Amazon in Response to Sales Ranking Censorship [La Figa]

Earlier: Why Is Amazon Removing The Sales Rankings From Gay, Lesbian Books?
Amazon Stripped Sales Rank Listings Updated
Amazon Fail: The Pictures Say It All

A reader forwarded us the email she received from Jacob Hawkins, Senior Vice President at Overstock.com after contacting the company about the video game. He wrote:

I appreciate you bringing this to our attention. We try, but not always succeed, in catching and removing items like this from our website. This was an unintentional error and we hope you will accept our sincere apologies. We promptly removed this product from our website and added it to our prohibited items list, and in future will more carefully police for similar auction products.

The game was not being sold directly from Overstock.com, but through the auctions section of the website. All auctions of the game have been removed from the site, as well as from eBay.

Amazon.com was never selling the game directly either. It was listed on Amazon Marketplace, the section of the website open to third-party sellers. Following complaints, Rapelay was removed from Amazon.com and a company spokeswoman said today, "we determined that we did not want to be selling this particular item," according to the .

Though that specific game was removed, Melissa McEwan writes on Shakesville that after clicking on one of the games suggested by Amazon.com when "Rapelay" yielded no results, she was asked "looking for rape products?" The link directed her to pages upon pages of books and movies of interest to rape enthusiasts, mixed in with books like The Rape Recovery Handbook.

McEwan searched for similar suggestions on other websites, but says:

Nowhere else [but on Amazon.com] was I offered up an opportunity to browse "rape products" clearly tailored to people who get off on rape. Nowhere else was I asked if I meant to search for "age," but nonetheless offered a link to browse "rape products." Nowhere else did I see "revenge" or "women" associated with rape.

Ed Note: If the comments here spiral out of control the same way they did on yesterday's post, we'll have to disable them. Please, people: Be respectful, and alert us to any trolls.

Rapelay Virtual Rape Game Banned By Amazon [The Telegraph]
Related: Looking For Rape Products? Try Amazon [Shakesville]

The rape simulation game involves players chasing a mother on the subway and violently raping her, and then tracking down and raping her two daughters described as virgin schoolgirls. The game includes even more horrific details according to online game reviews, such as the option get other men to join in the attacks, having to force the women to get abortions if they get pregnant, and what a review (NSFW) from Something Awful says are "tears that glisten and move in the little girl's eyes."

Following a report from the Belfast Telegraph that Amazon was selling the English version of the game, the company has removed it from the site. Amazon has not commented on the item or said why it was being sold through their website. The screen shot below from Google's cache shows the Amazon page for the game before it was taken down.

The game is produced by the Japanese company Illusion, which makes other 3D adult video games. According to the Illusion Wikipedia page, company policy says that, "games are not intended to be sold or used outside of Japan, and official support is only given in Japanese and for use in Japan." As if somehow the game being sold only in Japan makes it any less disgusting.

British MP Keith Vaz says he is planning to raise the issue in Parliament. "It is intolerable that anyone would purchase a game that simulates the criminal offence of rape," said Vaz. "To know that this widely available through a major online retailer is utterly shocking, I do not see how this can be allowed." Last year, when Vaz brought up rape simulation video games during a discussion on a bill about film ratings, he was criticized by other MPs who said such games didn't exist and gamers who commented online that he didn't know what he was talking about.

Though the game is no longer available on Amazon, the English version of the game is still being sold on here on eBay, here on Overstock.com, and on many other websites.

[Image via Game SMS]

Amazon Drops Rape Simulation Game [The Belfast Telegraph]
Rapelay Review [Something Awful] (NSFW)

Shantell Powell (“The ShanMonster”) writes:

I grew up without nipples. I knew that one day, they would descend, and that would be the day when I could proudly call myself a woman. But I was growing worried. By the time I was 17, I still had no nipples. At 21, I was beginning to panic. When I turned 27, I finally found these nipple extractors, and they saved my self-esteem.

With two simple twists of the wrist, I flowered. Now I could proudly disrobe at the local topless beach, where before I'd been shamed.

Billy finds the product slightly less useful:

I have been haveing issues with my nipples for years so I figured I would give this product a try. I found that it worked great for a couple of weeks and then it became extremely difficult to continue use. The rash and irratation became too much to tolerate. It is just easier to buy a set of jumper cables and a battery charger. Trust that works much better!

And S.Mathew says:

I bought one for my girlfriend as a Christmas present but the instructions that came with it made no sense.

(This is actually a plumbing tool, so don't go using it on your nipples. Unless, of course, you're into that)

WTF Fetish Gadget [Random Good Stuff]

• Carrie Bradshaw in Burberry in Sex and the City movie ads: Potentially even more damaging to the brand than the chavs? [Vogue UK]
  
• Quick turnaround! Halston redux will be available on-line on Net-a-Porter the day after its runway show next week? Says Net-a-Porter chairman Natalie Massenet:"I am sure this will be a shock to the brands that specialize in knocking off some of the talent in the fashion industry. They had their cake and have been eating it for a while." [Vogue UK]
  
• All employees in the Tod's group were just given a $2,000 bonus by Group head Diego Della Valle as an "I'm-Sorry-The-Italian-Economy-Is-Bad-Right-Now" gesture. Um, are you reading this, Mr. Denton? [WWD, 2nd item]
  
• Cynthia Rowley: Now designing for Target. [WWD, 4th item]
  
• ThreeAsFour: Now designing for the Gap. [Fashionista]

• Louis Vuitton, not content to merely assault us with logos in magazines, on billboards and plastered across half the luggage in LAX's baggage carousels, is producing television commercials now too. [WWD]
• Since the stars have no awards shows to go to it looks like many will be coming out to New York for next week's fashion shows instead. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Alberta Ferretti has inked a fragrance licensing deal with Elizabeth Arden; the label's premiere scent is set to launch in spring 2009, with a skin care line to follow. [WWD, 1st item]
• Ralph Lauren just opened a new endoscopy wing at the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention in Harlem. We never knew that Ralph was all into helping cancer patients in Harlem! [WWD]
• The Spring 2008 Nordstrom campaign is all artsy and highbrow, with paintings done by Ruven Afandor. Paintings done by Ruven Afandor on models, that is. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Marie Claire editor-in-chief Joanna Coles on the reasoning behind the pre-Fashion Week dinner she threw: "The designers needed help and the models needed feeding." [Fashion Week Daily]
• More from PR pro Kelly Cutrone on preparing for Fashion Week: "Mara Hoffman...refus[ed] to show before 2:21 p.m. on February 2 as the moon would be void, off course (of course)...Araks will show first, immediately followed (after 2:21 p.m.) by Mara. I call Mara and ask, "What is happening astrologically?" She replies, "Mercury is in retrograde." [Chic Report]
• No shocker here: More and more people are buying clothes from Amazon.com. [Times of London]
• How bad is the economy? So bad that lipstick isn't even selling. And lipstick sales are supposed to go up during a recession. [AdAge]

The only interesting thing we found about the 'Astro-nut' love triangle kidnap thing blah blah blah, was the fact that she drove the 900 miles from Houston to Orlando non-stop, wearing diapers.

Ever helpful, we'd like to inform any other bitter incontinent would-be kidnapping astronauts out there that there's a special offer on Pampers over at Amazon this month.

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