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This kind of thing seems like it would be a product of the past, back when it was acceptable for your husband to beat you for buying the wrong coffee. But this ad for a Canadian hair salon, which implores customers to "look good in all you do" (including getting beaten) is from 2011.

via adweek.com

Why is the only thing worse-looking than the eye her hair?

A 2014 issue of Vogue Italia ran a shoot whose target audience consisted solely of Patrick Bateman:

Steven Meisel

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The glamorous gang rape is another bizarre mainstay of fashion photography. In this genre, a woman is shown surrounded and held in place by one or more men. Her expression is usually blank, as are the faces of those surrounding her. This 2007 Dolce & Gabbana ad -- which became so notorious that everybody from Italian textile workers to Amnesty International called for its boycott -- was excused by Stefano Gabbana as "an erotic dream, a sexual game." Weird, because no one in the ad seems to be having a good time.

Stefano Gabbana

"D&G: uncomfortable during a gang bang" proved an honest but unsuccessful slogan.

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That lesson was learned by no one, and a few years later, Calvin Klein did something similar.

Calvin Klein

This one was even banned in Australia, where bizarre and fucked-up deaths are accepted and commonplace.

And then there's "The Wrong Turn," by Indian photographer Raj Shetye, released not long after a 23-year-old student was raped in New Delhi by six men on a bus.

Raj Shetye

Classy!

What do all these images have in common? They're all fantasies about exerting power over helpless women. That's more than a little weird, considering most of them are supposed to be selling products to those same women. In what world is "I'm gonna kill you, bitch" considered a tantalizing sales pitch?

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