Austria gets a surprise – definitely NSFW

According to LaChapelle, the posters are inspired by the Life Ball’s theme, “‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ and Hieronymus Bosch’s utopia of a diverse society, living together passionately and peacefully, as if the Fall of Man had never happened and people had never been expelled from Paradise.” The posters were unveiled in Vienna yesterday.

That’s from the Huffington Post.

All I can say is that Carmen is lovely. Beautiful. Stunning. I could rest my eyes on that face and body (all of it) for a very long time. That penis doesn’t bother this “cis-het” male in the slightest. I’m sure it is freaking out people who aren’t so confident about their sexuality as they thought.

Then there’s Adam. I don’t get the translucent globe over the guy’s head. Kind of like a bloodshot eyeball? That just looks weird. Maybe it is supposed to be jarring for artistic effect or possibly to dehumanize him. (Hieronymus Bosch was not known for his representation of the ordinary.) The oddness of it is either a counterpoint to Eve’s perfection or an unwanted distraction and I can’t decide. I think she is reaching down to help him up. The flowers aren’t in her hand if you look closely. Quite a wild tweak of the Adam and Eve mythos.

I applaud Carmen’s boldness and courage to to this for a good cause. Full nudity is accepted in billboards and posters through much of Europe but I guess transsexual nudity is still a bit touchy in some people’s minds.

LaChapelle says, “For me the body is more than something to be looked at as an object of sexual gratification.” Carmen says, “Beauty has no gender. At the end of the day beauty is beauty.”