Since people don’t seem to mind my gossip stories from Russia, I’ll share the most recent one. A famous female journalist and blogger of about my age was approached by a French company that manufactures comfortable underwear for professional women. The blogger agreed to participate in the company’s promotional campaign and started writing promo pieces about the product on her blog. She is such a talented writer that even her sponsored pieces are a lot of fun to read.

The next step in the promo campaign was creating a video featuring the French underwear. Since the blogger in question had participated in many ad campaigns as a model, she decided to star in the video. She also wrote the script for it. In the script, a beautiful, professional woman in her thirties sees off to work the man she loves while wearing the comfortable French underwear.

For the video, the blogger needed a male model who would embody her vision of the most desirable man possible: a paunchy, balding government official in his sixties. The modeling agency turned heaven and earth to find a male model who looked that way. It wasn’t possible to find a male model who’d be as balding and paunchy as the blogger found attractive, so she had to accept a male model who looked more or less like this:

The blogger wanted the story of the video to unfold in an apartment, but that would have made the filming too complicated. So the shoot took place at a hotel. In the video, the male model who looks like the guy in the photo above leaves a hotel room and a much younger woman in underwear sees him off.

The Russian blogger was very happy with her video and sent it to the French headquarters of the underwear company. Within hours, the enraged representatives of the company called her back.

“Are you trying to make fun of us?” they bellowed. “The guy in the video looks just like DSK! And he’s leaving a hotel room that he shared with a much younger woman. The DSK scandal is a huge embarrassment for our country! We don’t want our company to be associated with this nastiness in any way!”

The blogger tried explaining that she was not aware of any DSK character and that she was simply trying to film the most romantic, homey and tender scenario she could imagine. And what can be more romantic than a beautiful, highly successful woman and a state apparatchik twice her age?

The French company didn’t relent, however, and the male model had to be edited from the video altogether.

If you think I invented this whole story, I could provide links. They will be in Russian, though.