It occurred to me while reading the Sunday newspaper recently that the stuff in the ads and the stuff in the editorials don’t jibe. This is blatantly evident at any time of year, not just Christmas. The tinsel won’t be off the living room floor before we’ll be greeted at every turn of a page and every store-front with smiling Victoria’s Secret models tempting us with heart-shaped chocolates and grapefruit sized bottoms.
Next, it will be green thongs for St. Patrick’s day, exemplars of the runway offering Easter finery, size 2 and under of course, followed by a couple of months worth of string bikinis.
The complimentary side of the coin is an endless barrage of TV presentations featuring early middle aged machismos who, but for the grace of Viagra, would be mere helpless noodles. If all it takes to look like THAT is a little dysfunction, hell, it might be worth the inconvenience!
Meanwhile, plain brown wrappers everywhere peck out diatribes of anti-sexuality as money changes hands at warp speed in the marketplace. Women who haven’t seen size two since ninth grade, if ever, wax indignant about being sex-objects. They should be so lucky. Men who couldn’t bench-press their own shoes snort disapprovingly while secretly enjoying every tease commercial and print ad.
Like it or not, mating season is year-round for the human species. Pheromones fill the air, idealized female’s presenting carefully accentuated characteristics of sexual attractiveness, and rock-solid young males who shave before every meal and exude surplus testosterone fill the fanciful field of vision. Yet, any man who dares to ogle is a “pig” and any woman who shortsightedly purrs at the image of the handsome jocko selling the car that “turns you on” instantly falls off the moral dado in the estimation of her peers doing the same thing more discreetly.
If it is so foul, why does it take an orgasm to sell everything from a pair of living room curtains to a cheeseburger? Who’s selling and who’s buying? The answer is we all are, but we’ve developed this façade of disgust like PITA people secretly enjoying a good steak.
It’s really quite amusing when you think about it. I’ve never seen a gorgeous woman with legs all the way up to her ears complain about being pleasing to the eye, and I’ve never known a man who was offended to overhear himself being referred to as a “hunk”. On the other hand, I do notice a lot of lard butts loitering about the lingerie, and I’ve been guilty of looking at the spandex in the sporting goods store as though an intense stare would miraculously allow me to actually wear the stupid things without looking like an oversized Gouda cheese.
I think the only society ever to be successful at accepting their natural functions as healthy and downright fun were the Tahitians of Margaret Mead fame, but we “civilized” them a long time ago.
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