The other week I was reading about FEMEN (Фемен), a feminist movement in Ukraine and their controversial protest tactics which involve going topless whilst wearing traditional flower wreaths. Inspired, I went to their blog to read more. It’s in Ukrainian, so although I could keep visiting and using Google Translate each time, I wanted to subscribe in a more real-time way. So I created a translated version of their Twitter account using Yahoo Pipes and Twitterfeed to do so. You can read how I did it in step-by-step instructions on my work blog here: Translating Twitter with Yahoo Pipes.

On the issue of whether Femen going topless detracts from the issues they’re trying to get across, I believe that although they are going to get criticised for using the objectification of women as their tool, they are going to get a lot more coverage doing so, and until we sort the system out, it’s fair enough to use the system against itself.

17 May 2010 FEMEN Activist posing topless at Bankovaya St with President of Ukraine sign at the background. Bear scratches symbolize their protest against a pro-Russian politics of Yanukovich that will lead to ruining national interests and influence badly on women.

I love Google Insights because I love data and data analysis. I’ve used this tool for a long time for keyword research, audience research, for timing campaigns for clients and lots of other stuff. I thought I’d use it tonight to see what body part people are most interested in (you know the crude saying, “tits or ass?”) and it came up some really interesting stuff which I’ll share here. I’ll probably get a tonne of weird porno people coming to my site now but what the hell, this is interesting stuff to me so here goes. Data is based on Worldwide searches in Google from November 2005 to November 2010.

Leaderboard of body parts / key

I put a bunch of body parts that people looking for porn on the internet are likely to put into Google Search. It only lets you compare five. “porn” itself was way way off the scale, and “vagina” was just below “dick” in terms of popular searches. So, we see that we have “ass” as the number one body part, followed by “tits”. “penis” and “boobs” are tied and “dick” comes last. Interesting.

Has it always been this way? Well, no.

Here we see that over the last couple of years, “ass” has grown in popularity, particularly in the past year, having been much closer to “tits” in 2005-2008. In contrast, “tits” has fallen and if it continues to do so, will be overtaken by “boobs”. “penis” and “dick” have remained relatively stable.

Do worldwide tastes differ? Let’s take a look. Here’s a heatmap of how interests in “ass” have spread across the world in the past five years:

Yes, the country most interested in “ass” is a small African country called Eritrea. Other countries at the top of the interest chart for each word are: “tits” in Canada, “penis” in Papua New Guinea, “boobs” in Pakistan and “dick” in New Zealand.

In related search terms, the top related search for all words was “big whatever” e.g. “big tits”, except “penis” where “big penis” was outdone by “the penis”. Weird.

You can see and play around with all this data yourself on Google Insights for Search here.

Next I should do the same thing for kinky sex acts and see what’s most popular and where. This is fun!

Also if you like this kind of research, you’ll like OKCupid’s blog – OK Trends. It’s great.

Tonight was the launch party of Levi’s brand new ‘Shape What’s to Come‘ – a social network for women who work in the creative industries, for positive social change. The site has its public beta launch this coming Monday. I was invited by Levi’s PR agency, Edelman, with some classic blogger outreach ticking all the boxes (transparency, exclusive event invite, flattery, personalised email explaining why I was invited in particular, no press release attachment). So I was invited due to my work in social media for non-profits.

The party was at Levi’s flagship store on Regent Street in London. I arrived, wearing Primark jeans and a band t-shirt. Downstairs was a free bar and a bunch of ‘mood boards’ for want of a better term, created by SWTC ambassadors. The discussion was chaired by Annie Mac and the ambassadors included Kathryn Ferguson (filmmaker), Justice Williams (Tru Life magazine), Kristin Knox (fashion blogger), Ikonika (DJ/producer) and Anna Murray & Grace Winteringham (Patternity).

I’d guess that the crowd was 95% female, 95% aged 18-30 and quite racially diverse. It was also 95% stylish and 75% good looking IMO (which is pretty high). Once I’d finished objectifying my sisters, I thought I’d better listen to the discussion. Overall it was quite generic with people saying how important confidence and dedication is, how they don’t like being defined by being female etc. 

Then Jane Bradley one of the organisers of Ladyfest 10 dared to utter the F word. What did our panelists think about Feminism? This caused a wave of nervous giggles and awkward expressions, and one by one the female role models on stage explained that they were not feminists. Patternity said they were women but weren’t working to exclusively help women (as if feminism doesn’t help men?!), and said, “this isn’t a feminist cult!”. At this point the woman in front of me said to her companion, “why are they all so fucking scared of being feminist?”. Hurrah that woman. Out of the six women on stage, only one was brave enough to come out as a feminist. That was Kristin Knox. She then talked about boy bloggers in fashion and mentioned something about gay and straight people that seemed a bit out of context but well done for trying to bring in the subject of sexuality anyway

Overall the discussion was a bit disappointing in its lack of depth or feminist  analysis for me, but it was probably appropriate for the majority of the crowd who seemed to be interested in creative industry entrepreneurship and business rather than women working for social change. In fact, it wasn’t that clear what the ambassadors were doing in the field of social change. They seemed to be successful female role models though, and there was a little discussion about challenges with making money, and the struggles some had gone through financially.

After the talks was more networking time, then a surprise performance from The Noisettes, which was excellent and made me wish I’d brought a proper camera. The event was let down by not having any free wifi that I could find, and uncertainty of what hashtag to use. We also all got a 30% discount voucher for Levi’s which was nice. I had to leave early so missed the DJ set by Ikonika.

So this social network is clearly a branding and CSR endeavour by Levi’s and I’m interested to see how it goes. I met some good people tonight too and I think they got their target audience right. I now want to find out what Levi’s CSR policies are in term of slave labour etc. I know Primark are bad, but my reasoning for shopping there is that it’s better to give £8 to an unethical company than £80 to an equally unethical company for the same thing, when the price isn’t reflective of the workers’ wages anyway. But yeah, I haven’t researched Levi’s practices yet so I won’t pass judgement yet. I probably should have asked that question to the panel.

Some other posts by ladies there on the night, who had actual cameras not just iPhones:
Fashion Fois Gras
A Pair and a Spare
Zaiba Jabbar
Bang Bang You’re Dead

Worst case of restrictive Title options I’ve seen so far. Shall I be male or married today?! Seen on www.groupon.co.uk

And THEN, trying to sign up to eHarmony and am confronted with the choice – do I want a relationship with a Man or a Woman? Because you can’t choose ‘either’! What am I supposed to do, sign up twice?! Massive fail eHarmony. Seriously – non-homosexual queer people don’t want a relationship?

eHarmony - don't make me choose!

It might be harder work on your algorithms, but if you’re gonna make a dating/relationship site or any site with a personal profile, you seriously need someone with a basic understanding of identity politics to give it the once over. Until they sort this out, I’m boycotting eHarmony on principle.