Look Ma, No Pants!
Ok, so we all know about the 'No Undie Sunday' stunt at the Saint, in St Kilda, Melbourne town... funnily enough I work there.
I have hosted there ON A SATURDAY (different night to the stunt-pulling night) for over two years now. In the Saint's defence, they are awesome blokes and not sexist at all (I would def not be working there if that was the case). At the juice of it, it was the blokes who run their Sundays, who came up with it all, and got them into trouble. These blokes run a few other nights in Melbourne, and I am not a fan of them. They ARE sexiest moles, and I hope for the Saint's sake that Pauli and Cam, my boss' fire those boys ASAP.
Anyway, the article took me on a trip down memory lane - when I used to run around in my undies every Friday for not much of a reason at all. Here's a really badly made YouTube clip of us up to our tricks - but it's still entertaining!
It started out with just me and my mate Nat being bored uni students with nothing to do but be hung-over on a Friday morning. Fox's Hamish and Andy started PANTS OFF FRIDAY as a little gimmick with Boost, that if you rocked up bared-legged, you'd get a free juice. Sounded awesome to us hung-over ladies. So we did it once. Then we did it the next week and the next and the next. Soon enough we found ourselves being offered money... so we thought, why not do it for charitable reasons. So we ran around the city and other various venues just handing out pieces of paper that said, "Smile someone loves you. Take your pants off, it feels good. If you're up for it, do a little dance. That feels even better. Love P.O.G (Pants Off Girls)".
Lots of Asian tourists stopped us for photos - that was my favourite part.
Back on track - we decided that spreading our positivity would link in nicely with Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty; so I hunted down which charity in Aus or Melb were helping them out (this is back when the campaign was only in America and Canada) - it turned out to be the Butterfly Foundation. Once I tracked them down I went on and organised a massive dance event to raise money for them and gain awareness of the Dove fund. With my mate Michael, we managed to secure 9 of Melbourne's top local and international DJ's to play free-of-charge, got free venue use of Billboard and then scoped out huge dj/producer FUNKAGENDA from the U.K to come and play ... we still had to pay him a fair bit of course! This was back when I had a show on Triple R fm, so during one show we got the Butterfly Foundation's media guru on the phone and I gave her a rippa interview, plugged the gig and gave away a few tickets. Everyone rocked up in undies, boardshorts, budgie smuglers etc, just not pants. It was really good fun and we raised over $3000 for the Butterfly Foundation. A small event in comparison to a lot, but still a success.
Since then the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty finally expanded to Australia - as every has seen all their ads for the last year or so with 'Real Women'. I personally think it's an awesome tact and Dove rock my jocks. I feel my Pants Off fun was an example of a more 'tasteful' way to gain exposure for a cause, without being a total skank and degrading myself at the same time!
