Protective gear: Vintage ads and a blast from the past.

After my stormtrooper post - http://eatsleepride.com/c/4609 - I accidentally ran across this gem, too. For those of you not familiar with it, it's a very famous (and pretty old) ad, I think from the late 80's. For the period, it's about normal, with most anything related to motorcycles being advertised with naked, or near naked women - in this case, with painted on "leathers".

However, before you get too excited, I should tell you the person in the red helmet is called Tula. When it came out, the ad did cause a sensation - not for the nudity, but for the unwitting caption "a double life".

You see, it turned out that Tula was actually called Caroline. At least, that what she wrote on the contracts. In actuality, her name was Barry and she was a post-op transsexual.

The campaign went very well, as did her career (she appeared in a Bond film) at least until the sex-change stories came out. Apparently, she then went on to appear in Playboy before releasing an autobio or two but like Californian Helmets, she seems to have disappeared, along with most of the ads that looked like this.