Category: Fashion

About the Museum
The Museum of Hoaxes, founded by Alex Boese in 1997, is dedicated to promoting knowledge about the phenomenon of hoaxes. On our blog (to the left) we post about dubious-sounding claims — and whatever else strikes our fancy. But there's more to the museum than the blog. Check out our historical wing, which contains hundreds of articles about famous hoaxes, arranged chronologically from the Middle Ages right up to the present. Our Gallery of the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Ever celebrates that one day of the year devoted to pranks and practical jokes. In our forum, you can chat with other MoH members. And there's much, much more.

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Category: Fashion

The case of the inserted belly button

Status: Undetermined

I've heard of photo editors airbrushing out navels on swimsuit models (see the case of the vanishing belly button from 1964), but I hadn't heard of navels being inserted into photos. But that appears to be the case with Victoria's Secret model Karolina Kurkova.

Fashion watchers have recently noticed that Kurkova doesn't appear to have a full belly button. Instead she only has a "smooth dimple". Wikipedia speculates that the lack of a belly button is due to an abdominal operation in infancy. Nevertheless, in some photos she sports a full belly button, which means that photo editors must be creating one for her.

Or maybe it's all just an effect of different lighting conditions, and the debate is an excuse to examine photos of her. (via collegeotr.com)

Below: with belly button (left), without belly button (right).

Update: Some more photos of her via underwearqueen. Again, with belly button (left), and without (right).

Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue Nov 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Category: Body Manipulation, Fashion, Photos/Videos

The FlairHair Visor

Status: Gag product

A quick and easy solution to hair loss: Kotula's FlairHair visor.

This cool little item will keep you covered and its built-in visor will protect your eyes from the sun, all while giving you a distinctive, 1970s, Bjorn Borg-at-Wimbledon look.

Also available in a white-hair version!

Posted By: Alex | Date: Mon Nov 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7)
Category: Body Manipulation, Fashion

Is Bra-Burning a Myth?

Status: historical myth

Bra-burning came to symbolize the feminist movement, but according to this article at pressofAtlanticCity.com, the original 1968 bra-burning protest, that first associated bra-burning with feminism, never actually happened.

Members of New York Radical Women, upset by the Miss America Pageant's focus on women's physique and seeing an opportunity to publicize their cause, traveled to Atlantic City by bus. They wanted to burn things, as was in vogue then (people mad about other topics - such as the war in Vietnam - burned draft cards and flags), but city officials worried about the safety of the wooden Boardwalk asked the organizers not to burn anything, so they didn't.

Instead, the feminists dumped items like high-heeled shoes, bras, false eyelashes and issues of Ladies' Home Journal into a "Freedom Trash Can." They paraded a lamb outside Convention Hall and held up signs with such things as "Welcome to the Miss America Cattle Auction" written on them. Inside Convention Hall, demonstrators set off stink bombs during the pageant and unfurled a sign reading "WOMEN'S LIBERATION."

Newspapers helped fuel the fire. On Sept. 4, three days before the event, Lindsy Van Gelder of the New York Post wrote an article titled "Bra burners plan protest." In the Sept. 8 issue of the New York Times, protest organizer and former child actor Robin Morgan is quoted as saying the women would hold a "symbolic bra-burning." Open the next day's Atlantic City Sunday Press, and the headline jumps from page four: "Bra-Burners Blitz Boardwalk."

And so the bra-burning myth was born. Though I'm sure protesters must have burned their bras at some later point in time.

Posted By: Alex | Date: Fri Sep 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Category: Fashion, History

Fleeing Purse Snatcher Drops Breast

Status: Weird faux fashion

Police in Port St. Lucie are on the lookout for a cross-dressing purse snatcher who accidentally dropped a condom filled with water after grabbing a 74-year-old woman's purse. He had been using the condom as a fake breast. That's weird enough. What I can't understand is why he was using a water-filled condom. Wouldn't a regular balloon have worked better?

Though questioning the fashion decisions of a cross-dressing purse snatcher is surely an exercise in pointlessness.

Posted By: Alex | Date: Wed Sep 03, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (6)
Category: Body Manipulation, Fashion, Law/Police/Crime

Artificial hips are all the rage

Status: Weird fashion

Kenyan men like women with large hips. So Kenyan women eager for male attention are flocking to beauticians who are selling artificial hips. The hips consist of foam padding held on by skin-tight bike shorts and covered by cotton fabric. The Kenya Standard reports:

Ready-made shape boosters (not their original name) go for as much as Sh250. Those who bring their own bikers pay Sh100 for hips only and Sh150 for all that goes on the backside.

However, the hips do have some potential problems:

The ‘hips’ were a closely guarded secret until men spotted a woman whose behind appeared un-proportional. "I looked at the lady and realized something was very wrong. It’s like one side of her hips was tumbling down," says a town resident Mary Auma who witnessed it. The foam material had apparently loosened up leaving her with an extraordinarily weird shape. Stories are told of men who get bewitched with the hips only to be shocked to reality when the women undress. The hips christened ‘please call me’ are not always as natural as they seem.

Posted By: Alex | Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5)
Category: Body Manipulation, Fashion

Pantyhose Corner

Status: Prank

For more than two years someone has been dumping pantyhose near Geneseo Circle in Milford, Massachusetts. Residents report that new pantyhose appear three to four times per week. One day (the record, I assume) there were 43 pairs. From bostonchannel.com:

Most of the pairs of pantyhose are black and "queen sized," neighbors said. Some residents are considering using video cameras and walkie-talkies to catch the culprit.

I wonder if this is, in any way, related to Shoe Corner in Hanover Township, New Jersey -- the place where shoes keep mysteriously getting dumped?

Posted By: Alex | Date: Mon Aug 04, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Category: Fashion, Pranks

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