BigShinyThing

Kari Smith auctioned her forehead as advertising space on Ebay, a trend which continues apace, for $10,000. She claims that she is performing the permanent stunt to pay for a private education for her son:

For all the sacrifices everyone makes, this is a very small one. It’s a small sacrifice to build a better future for my son.

Tattoo artist Don Brouse claims that he and his staff spent nearly seven hours trying to talk Smith out of putting ‘GoldenPalace.com’ above her face. Smith’s auction attracted more than 27,000 hits and 1,000 watchers (or gawkers). Bidding reached $999.99 before Goldenpalace.com, an Internet gambling company based in the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake, met Smith’s ‘buy it now’ price.

Salon reports on the whole sorry tale (watch short ad to access) and BBC news covered a similiar story back in January. Of course, forehead advertising is nothing new. Field promotion agencies in the UK have deployed needy students in this way for a while and there are now whole companies and websites dedicated to it. What is new is the extremes to which people are going — literally auctioning themselves on eBay. Maybe eBay — which was forced to take a moral line on Live8 tickets this month — should pull the plug on this particular nasty little trend.

Ad Rag believes this may be a hoax… all the more reason to stop it.