Virgin tells people to get naked for charity, beneficiaries not amused

So all of Virgin's many, many brands tend to have a somewhat quirky sense of humor, and typically, that seems to sit just fine with the company's young (and youthful) target demo. It's par for the course then with Strip2Clothe, a campaign it recently launched to get folks to do their best Elizabeth-Berkley-in-Showgirls impression on camera. The idea was simple, if not a little bizarre: post up your best striptease, and for every five views, Virgin would donate one article of clothing to a network of organizations dedicated to helping homeless youth around the country. Problem is, those organizations were never consulted before Virgin launched the campaign, and some of them weren't terribly pleased with the concept, calling it "exploitative" and "distasteful" among other things. Despite the outcry, Strip2Clothe is still online, with a Virgin rep saying "this issue is really important to us, we've had over 12,000 hits for the site so far, and we want to continue to raise awareness for this important issue." And yes, we know you're going to Google it the second you're done reading this, so don't even try to hide it.

[Via mocoNews]