Just for men with too little else to do

There are all kinds of competitions in Las Vegas nightclubs, and they're designed to entice hot women inside, so that men will spend big booze money on them. There are bikini contests, dancing contests, and fake-boob contests.

Right, so Privé at Planet Hollywood hosted one of these fake boob competitions Saturday night, and women showed up in sets of twos, threes and nines. Special ladies dressed alike in boas.

Most were tiny breasted. For one night only, Privé was the world capital of the flat chest. These women were like plains drifters: travelers of a flat terrain; the sisterhood groveling for implants.

Clubs usually convince such women to, say, perform a fake orgasm on stage, where the winner is the sexiest faker or whichever girl simulates girl-on-girl action to score crowd applause.

But Privé merely asked interested women to sign up for a raffle when they strutted in. The winner's name would be discreetly plucked out of a box later. What's this? A club exercising slight concern for women's feelings about their image? What?

"We don't want to put them on display and have people boo," Greg Jarmolowich, managing director of Privé, told me. "We don't want to degrade women. We want to make it fun for people."

It's not clear if everyone knew there was a raffle or not. A bunch of not-flat Miss USA contestants who were contemplating their own contest this week didn't stick around long in their sashes.

And the first 11 flat women I approached said they didn't know what I was talking about, but a few slinked away from my respectful questions as if they were acquainted with the notion of indignity, so who knows?

One tall tourist from England, Nancy, didn't want her last name in the paper, and said no one told her she could toss her breasts into the raffle ring. It didn't bother her, though. She eyed her prodigious boobs as well as the heaving orbs of her three friends and bragged of their collective gravitational pull.

"I guess they thought that some of us didn't need them," she boasted.

Nancy then purred that while in town, she and her friends had matching tattoos of a five-tip star inked onto their left butt cheeks.

"Do you want to see them?" Nancy asked.

Uhmmm.

Finally, I found Anika, 29. She was anxious to win boobs. She was an out-of-work cocktail waitress who wanted to replace her "negative A" cup with "big C's" or "little D's."

"I have booty, but I don't have booby," she said in heels catapulting her athletic frame from 5-feet-7 to 5-feet-10. "It's hard to get a job here without boobs, especially a black girl," Anika said, pointing out she was black.

"They hire size-zero white women with big boobs. You will hardly ever see a black woman in a club," working.

That wasn't totally true at Privé. Yes, among svelte workers, hefty cleavage did knock about. But regarding heritage, there was at least one black go-go dancer. Also, quite a few cocktailers and other go-go-shakers were not white.

Anika shared a sad story. When she was 11 in Miami, she desired a chest as impressive as her mom's "D's." But Anika's breasts refused to budge. She figured her mom's gifts had bloomed via the conduit of a magical "exercise bra," so Anika stole Mom's bra and wore it.

Yet, years passed, and Anika's top shelf never extended. At last, when Anika was 24, her mom spilled the beans that she owned "D" cups because she'd bought them from a plastic surgeon. Oh, the cruelty of fate and deception.

I told Anika her husband should buy her boobs. He's got a decent-paying job. Alas, they have five kids and can't afford it.

After four hours of further careful observation, it dawned on me there were more women than men at Privé. Most everyone smiled and danced. Strangers made out at length in loud corners. It was packed but not racked.

Amid the joy or desperation or whatever nightclubs inhabit at any given moment, one glum guy slouched on a couch near the entrance.

He identified himself as Gary Newton, 28, an arms-defense worker from Ohio: "We make shit what kills people. ... Death has been a successful business."

What did he think about these flat women? He gestured my attention to a trio giggling in front of us. Their outward demeanor was "We're happy as clams," while draped in baggy dresses concealing lean, surfboard bods.

"These girls are the same as every girl, right? They're wearing the burlap sack dress," Gary said merrily. "They're clearly not naturally blond. I don't suspect they read much. Probably their Channel bags are not real. Good Lord."

"They're hiding their bodies behind a proscenium of -- in this case -- teal. So although I like that their dresses finish above mid-thigh and gives me inspiration to fantasize about more, I'd rather meet Juno," the recent nerd-movie heroine.

Just then, these three smiling women Gary was tearing apart handed him a camera to snap their picture. Snap.

"Look at their hair," tall Gary groused afterward in his jeans and dark sneakers. "They've got roots. They're striving for an MTV-'Laguna Beach' perfection that doesn't really exist."

He then proclaimed the whole night a "banal, insipid hell" peopled in "a grandiose, least-common denominator."

Gary did have a good time, he said, "but only because that little girl right there? Her eyes will melt your soul."

Gary pulled out two business cards and began to make them disappear, a magic trick. I told him I didn't believe his name was Newton. He confessed it was not and further admitted he was not from Ohio, but L.A. When he walked away, he pointed his fingers in the air, shook his hips and grooved toward the thump-thump DJ spinnings of Rage Against the Machine.

Near the 3 a.m. mark, a DJ finally announced the winner of the raffle, someone named Christine Jones or something. It was hard to hear over the music that never stopped.

People on the dance floor didn't seem to pause to take notice. No woman raised her arms in bliss to rush the DJ booth. To collect her prize, the champion had to be present. As it was nearing dawn, I couldn't track her down so I bolted.

But first I looked for English Nancy and flat Anika and disco-liar Gary. Were they gone? Five hours after the club had opened, the anticipation had apparently stretched too long for them to wait to find out who could be the next lucky victor -- she who could soon leave behind the concave ranks of the yearning.

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.