Vass314 wrote:TandD wrote:Well, most are the standard fare but I'm shaking my head at the "Tape Art Evolution".
I/We have a bad taste in our mouths from the Black Tape Project of last March. I wrote up a whole review of it but never posted it because it was so negative. I know this isn't that but WTF is it?
What was wrong with BTP?
Okay, here's the excerpt from the report I started but never posted.
The Attack of the PlasticsIt turned out that our visit coincided with the week of "The Black Tape Project". As near as I can tell, this was some sort of photo shoot for magazines like Maxim and Playboy International where they used black tape arranged artfully on the model's body. Kind of like they do with the spray paint but with funky designs in tape. Yes, the tape was *everywhere* - like, I think they might have had to peel back a strip to pee.
Anyway, the talk of the week were the models. My wife officially labeled them The Plastics - not because of the augmentations that they sported - although there was plenty of that - but from the uncanny way they mirrored the behavior of the characters in the movie "Mean Girls". Lindsay Lohan's character labeled them The Plastics for the way they moved in a pack and were so self-absorbed that they basically didn't interact with the real world. That's what these models were like. They were *constantly* taking selfies. No seriously - constantly. Take a step - selfie. Take another step, flip the hair - selfie. Hold the phone a little higher, flip the other way - selfie. You would see them scurrying by in packs of two or three, heads buried in their phones. They would not look at you or even acknowledge your existence. It felt like they were barely tolerating the "normal" people that they had to wade by to get from wherever the f**k they were to wherever the f**k they had to be - repeatedly. Two tables of them were at dinner the same time as us at Pearl. They all had their phones out - presumably updating their social media feeds on what they just barely ate.
This behavior was so utterly opposite to everything that is Desire that people started to be annoyed by them. As has been pointed out in these forums over and over again, you are going to see all shapes and sizes at Desire. The great thing is that the differences tend to disappear because the like minded goals of enjoying the environment overpowers everything. The people are just so freaking *nice* that physical attributes fall way down on the list of what matters. Women who might have body issues or would normally feel the societal pressures of trying to live up to media standards, feel good about themselves because nobody cares about that here. But now, toss in a few super models who seem to look at you like you shouldn't be breathing the same air as them, and it all comes roaring back and it just feels wrong.
I'd love to give them the benefit of the doubt - they are young, they've probably been fawned over for many years because of the way they look, and clearly they were not being paid to interact with the guests. But perception is everything and neither we, nor any of the people we hung with, liked it much.
Now I know I've harped on it here but I don't want to give the impression that it was all-consuming or ruined our vacation in any way. It was an annoyance that I don't think Desire should repeat.
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So that's my impression of the Black Tape Project. I have no idea if this Tape Art Evolution theme has any connection to the BTP. In general though, this theme seems to be even more vague than the other standard ones and I just don't get it.