Frozen Alive Girl!

Here are two different icy business models:

Business #1: The Still Life Corporation delivers life-like mannequins to department stores to display merchandise for customers to buy. Still Life doesn’t charge anything to the buying public; the stores pay Still Life for the mannequins.

Business #2: The Frozen Girl Alive Exhibit displays a scantily-clad woman frozen in ice at a science fair as an “advancement in biotechnology,” as the public pays for merchandise, refreshments and services the fair provides. The Exhibit doesn’t charge anything to the buying public; the fair pays the Exhibit for the entertainment.

Of course, the Still Life example is from my Pretty Vacant comic book. Still Life finds suitable women, plasticizes them for mannequin molds, freezes them to be used later, and sells mannequins made from molds of these women to stores at a profit.

However, Frozen Alive was an actual attraction in the early 20th century, with the auspicious exhibit shown in various carnivals and even the 1939 World’s Fair.

The exhibit would last almost until closing time when a barker (probably the owner) would announce that they would now cut through the ice and the woman would come out of her frozen state, standing, shivering and smiling to the applauding crowd, only to re-freeze this woman for the next show, as the owner would sell souvenirs and collect local merchant fees for a profit.

And some people think Pretty Vacant is far-fetched! Some stuff just can’t be made up…