Renting Your Thighs to Advertiser Is a Thing Now

A lot of ads feature images of women’s bodies. But one ad agency in Tokyo has taken it a step further — by putting the ads directly on women’s bodies.

In a… creative bid to attract the attention of gawkers-slash-consumers, the Japanese firm WIT has convinced young women to rent the skin on their thighs to advertisers.

“It’s an absolutely perfect place to put an advertisement as it’s what guys are eager to look at and girls are okay to expose,” said Hidenori Atsumi, the WIT executive who came up with the idea. He asks the women to wear miniskirts and high socks to make the ads look more “seductive.”

A thigh can fetch up to 10,000 yen ($121) for just a day’s work — and more than 3,000 women have signed up. To participate, girls must be over 18, have at least 20 followers on social networking sites, and relish the stares of strangers.

“It’s like a new sort of fashion,” one thigh advertiser told the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. “Not only men, but also young women cast glances at me.”

Atsumi is not the first adman to recognize the human body’s potential as a billboard.

Earlier this year, New York real estate firm Rapid Realty offered a 15 percent pay raise to employees who got tattoos of the company’s logo. In May, men participating in A&W Root Beer’s “beard-vertising” campaign showed themselves willing to become walking banners for just five bucks a day (albeit on a less intimate body part).

WIT’s thigh campaign might rankle some feminist sensibilities. (Including mine.) But if organs, wombs, and even DNA are for sale, why shouldn’t thighs be on the market, too?