Down the memory hole!

September 30, 2005 12:09 PM

Bizarre obscure image search. I'm looking for a funny picture I saw a year or so ago on the 'net.

Describing it kind of spoils the joke for anyone who hasn't seen it, but oh well. The image is very tall vertically (you have to scroll to see it all), and it's broken up into 4 "cells" (like the photos you'd get out of a photo booth).

Cell 1: A shot of an attractive asian woman in a bikini, from behind (you can't see her face).
Cell 2: A bunch of guys leaning forward looking all excited.
Cell 3: A shot of the girl from the front, and her face is quite homely.
Cell 4: The same guys from #2, sitting back in their seats looking disappointed.

I know this is super obscure, but hey, there's like 25,000 people here right? Thanks!

posted by knave to grab bag (15 comments total)

The 'bunch of guys' in the photos are all writers/editors for IGN. The series of photos comes from this article about Nintendo's kind of crappy 2003 E3 presentation. They kind of became a common photoshop cliche, and the picture you're looking for followed from that.

It looks like some of the photos are missing from the article (damn), but there's some back story to the image you're hunting.
posted by PantsOfSCIENCE at 12:47 PM on September 30, 2005

"bakku-shan" is Japanese for "a girl who appears pretty when seen from behind (but not when seen from the front)."

No luck on Google Image Search for that word.
posted by sciatica at 12:59 PM on September 30, 2005

A friend was able to dig up this image.
posted by johannes at 1:20 PM on September 30, 2005

There are, however, results in the japanese image search. Many of them are of cats, however.
posted by Lockeownzj00 at 1:21 PM on September 30, 2005

This reminds me that I wondered where the term "butterface" comes from, which describes the hot-girl-except-the-face in this thread. Is it the literal translation of bakku-shan that sciatica answered, maybe?
posted by Kickstart70 at 2:44 PM on September 30, 2005

butterface come from "man what a hottie but her face was something out the swamp"
posted by Mitheral at 2:48 PM on September 30, 2005

johannes, that must be the wrong image, as there's nothing remotely funny about it.
posted by Item at 3:16 PM on September 30, 2005

I was going to make a comment about the strange inventiveness of Japanese vis-a-vis words for all variety of physical/sexual notions, but then "butterface" sort of shot that one in the foot.
posted by cortex at 3:22 PM on September 30, 2005

...but her face...

Oh man. I can't believe, with my love of puns, that I didn't pick up on that immediately.
posted by Kickstart70 at 3:58 PM on September 30, 2005

In Spain they call such girls "gambas" which means shrimp.

They explain it by saying that the body's delicious, but you throw away the head.

As for butterface, we always explained it like "oh man, what a body ... but 'er face!"

I love that there's a term in Japanese for that.
posted by redteam at 5:31 PM on September 30, 2005

Two more variations on this rather insulting theme:

* in the movie "Clueless" people who look nice from a distance but not up close are called "Monets" after the painter.

* a British variation on "butterface" would be "Body from Baywatch, Face from CrimeWatch".

The Japanese term, let's note, is far more specific than any of these, in that it specifically denotes a difference between back and front, not just between body and face.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:48 PM on September 30, 2005

johannes wins! (Well, actually his friend wins) Thanks! Sorry you didn't find it funny, item.
posted by knave at 6:55 PM on September 30, 2005

A less elegant variation is "buttface" (but face).

See also tip drill, which inspired a notorious Nelly video. [NSFTRWFS - Not Safe For Those Raised With Feminist Sensibility]

I said it must be ya ass cause it aint yo face i need a tip drill i need a tip drill

"Tip drill" has a secondary meaning of "pulling a train" which is also referenced in the song/video. To his credit, there's a female response which goes

I said it must be ya money cause it aint yo face you a tip drill nigga you a tip drill

Nelly claims the term was borrowed from a stripper, but there seem to be precedents for both meanings in tools and basketball, respectively.
posted by dhartung at 12:24 AM on October 1, 2005

Since the question's been answered to Knave's satisfaction, let's turn this thread over to the, yes, rather insulting theme.

I'm really intrigued by the idea that different cultures and languages have different terms for butterfaces, especially the hilariously specific Japanese term. So: can anyone think of any other examples?

(NB: I really am interested in this topic out of an academic curiousity; I'm not planning on yelling any of these terms out of my T-Bird on the way to my next kegger.)

The only additional term I can think of from my childhood is "50 Yard Beauty Queen," which should be self-explanatory. Weirdly, a search for "50 yard beauty" yields lots of sports references ("McNabb lofted a 50 yard beauty") but only one result that references a 50YBQ. (And it's a Farkish hax0r message board at that.) So maybe the term isn't as wide-spread as I thought.

Oh! Also related is "Summerteeth." (No, not the Wilco album that is criminally overshadowed by their later work.) As in: "She has summerteeth...sum 'er teeth are yellow, sum 'er teeth are green."
posted by Ian A.T. at 12:48 AM on October 1, 2005

My friends and I use a relatively common North London slang - an attractive person is "buff", an unattractive person is "butters". Therefore, someone who at first appears buff but is later revealed to be butters is "buffters".
posted by Lotto at 1:15 PM on October 2, 2005