Yes, the retro marketing craze continues unabated! We as a culture continue to concede that no one has come up with any good original ideas in the last, oh, 20 years or so, and as a result nostalgia for stuff we barely had time to forget is currently all the rage.
Take, for example, "Pepsi Throwback," which Pepsico is currently offering for a limited time only (unless it makes boatloads of money, I'm sure). It features the "old school" Pepsi logo and is made with REAL honest-to-goodness sugar! Woo-hoo! Man, you know it's a sad state of affairs when we're nostalgic for the good ol' days when we were only being poisoned with diabetes-inflicting cane/beet sugar, as opposed to the super-high-octane super-concentrated high-fructose corn syrup that infuses everything now.
That's right folks! Hop in our time machine and travel with Pepsico as they "throw you back" (isn't that something you do with a bad fish?) into the mists of yesteryear and rot your teeth the old-fashioned way! Yes, it was a simpler time back then, when no one dared to challenge their corporate masters' concern for the public's "well-being."*
More importantly, I think this trend speaks to a pervasive human weakness - one from which I am sadly not immune. That is, our tendency to romanticize the past regardless of how crappy that past may have actually been. It seems that things we associate with a younger, more innocent time (perhaps a healthier and safer time as well) always end up enshrouded in a glaze of rose-colored nostalgia, regardless of the truth of the situation. It matters not that we eventually learn Pepsi is dreadfully bad for us (or that our favorite TV show actually sucked, or our favorite music is sub-par). The important thing is we were awash in those pop culture symbols at a key point in our development, and hence we still have positive feelings for them.
Most well-socialized Americans will always have a strong affection for SOME token of consumer culture. We try to distance ourselves from these feelings as we get older by using intellectual weapons like irony, but their hold on us will always remain pretty powerful. Coca-Cola, for example, has always trounced Pepsi around the holidays because of the strong connotations Coke has forged between holiday imagery and the sugary beverage.
This is what makes corporate America so insidious and disingenuous: they try to downplay the role of branding and consumer culture in our lives (especially when someone calls them to task on their questionable marketing practices), but not only are they fully aware of the seductive power they wield, they're actively COUNTING on that power in lieu of being allowed to physically force us into buying stuff! You think they spend billions of dollars on PR, marketing and advertising every year because they think they CAN'T unduly influence us?
In other words, Pepsi (as well as the filmmakers who plunder bad TV shows, or the music exec's who keep re-selling us the same music in different packages) know exactly what they're doing when they try to push our nostalgia buttons; they're exploiting an evolutionary glitch that bestows virtue upon whatever sneakers we were wearing the night we first got laid (or whatever).
Even worse, we now live in a "savvy post-modern era" so marketers feel compelled to try and convince us that they're all "in" on the joke by using irony and self-awareness in the same way we do. It's almost like they're saying, "Haha! Yeah, we know this stuff is cheesy crap, but don't you love it? Haha! 20 dollars, please." Hell, as long as we keep buying whatever junk they toss our way they don't really care how we relate to it psychologically.
A particularly egregious example of this trend is the "Enzyte" (male enhancement) commercial. Although it is a recent product, the company's commercial exhibits the worst traits of Madison Avenue's many attempts to co-opt both nostalgia and post-modernism. Ostensibly a spoof of old-time advertising, television, and 50's "lifestyles", the makers of this commercial clearly missed an important lesson: Irony originally gained popularity in the mainstream as a means of subverting, questioning and commenting on the crap our culture constantly feeds us. (And let's not even get started on the type of vanity and insecurity that an ad like this is pandering to in the first place.)
Irony and self-awareness are used to greatest effect when someone is satirizing or undermining some aspect of the subject at hand, not when they're trying really hard to promote that thing! In other words, an exaggerated, cutesy spoof of 50's media works better as a critique of the messages media sends us; why the hell would someone want to buy a product from a commercial that effectively reminds us advertising can't be trusted and needs to be subverted?**
Simply stated, the answer is that all this stuff is just too overwhelming for any of us to think about on a regular basis. Corporate America hopes we'll just be so exhausted by them that we'll "go with the flow" just for the sake of our own sanity. The marketers' goal is to tap into the zeitgeist and then expertly exploit it; they're hoping they can hit a few of the "right notes" (be it nostalgia, irony, self-parody or whatever) and that'll be enough to send us scurrying for the malls. Unfortunately, it seems to work more often than not.
Excuse me one second.... what's that???? Target is selling Pac-Man pajamas??? COOL!!!!!!!!***
*************************************************************
*And by the way, "natural sugar"? Yeah, I know sugar is a natural ingredient, but the connotation of the word "natural" is that it carries some kind of wholesome-y goodness. Is Pepsi health food now? Not sure if belting back 40 grams of the sweet stuff in one sitting really fits the bill of "healthy." I wonder if this is Pepsi's token attempt at "going green" for the year 2010? After all, corporate America has never witnessed a movement they didn't see fit to exploit.
** I'm aware the makers of Enzyte would probably argue their ad is merely a playful "parody" or "affectionate homage" designed to get idiots like me talking. Well, parody or not, the commercial is poking fun at a long-gone era, and as such, it reminds us - however unwittingly - that pop culture and the media should always be viewed with a suspicious eye.
***What a lame cop-out ending. Wakka-wakka, game over.
Showing posts with label consumerism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consumerism. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Whole Foods, Semi-Nuts
I ventured into an organic food store this weekend – I won’t say the name but it rhymes with WHOLE FOODS – and it made me wonder about a few things, like how anyone can shop at Whole Foods on a regular basis without ending up wholly broke. Personally, I was only there to buy some super-powered probiotics, because it’s hard to maintain optimal levels of bile and venom unless you reinforce your stomach with mega-doses of amicable bacteria from time to time. At any rate, here are a couple of my random musings, with the maximum dosage of CSC units (cynical, snarky comments) per observation.*
First of all, does every stray herb, mineral, plant, fruit, vine, weed, berry, thorn, bacteria, bean, and clump of dirt to ever grace Gaea’s green earth have "miraculous" healing properties that some remote tribe has utilized for "thousands of years?" It seems that even the ones that look like they could kill you deader than my site traffic (stinging nettle, anyone?) possess amazing "regenerative and healing" properties. Wow! Fancy that.
You would THINK there would be at least one or two herbs that just f*ck your ass up and don’t have much to recommend them, but health food stores give me the distinct impression that every herb does something beneficial, if you look hard enough. What, none of them are just inert? You know, they don’t do a damn thing one way or the other? Apparently not. I think when all else fails, they just slap the old "refreshes your spirits" on the label. I normally leave that to my bartender, but hey, who can argue with "refreshes your spirits?"
Also, why is it always "thousands of years" of health benefits? I guess "cooked up by our marketing team a few weeks ago" just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Can’t you just see the research team at Eden’s Natural Garden of Bountiful Organic Harvest coming up with their latest "miraculous" product? "
*************************************************************
R&D Guy 1: Hey, what the hell are these berries?
R&D Guy 2: I don’t know, but they taste like ass.
R&D Guy 3: That means they’re bursting with anti-oxidizing properties.
R&D Guy 2: Tastes more like pro-ass-tasting properties.
R&D Guy 1: If this is anti-oxidizing, I am definitely pro-oxidation. Go oxidation!
R&D Guy 4: Those are heineyassa berries. They’re extremely rare.
R&D 1: Thank god.
R&D 2: So what do they do?
R&D 3: Well, nothing is proven, but several studies suggest heineyassa berries may increase the tensile strength of one’s nostril hair by as much as 3 percent.
R&D 4: Ok, it’s not much, but I guess we can work with it. What kind of dosage are we talking in order to achieve the desired effect?
R&D 3: Six hundred and sixty eight billion grams a day.
R&D 2: Six hundred and sixty eight billion grams!!!
R&D 3: Roughly equivalent to filling a ’73 Gremlin with heineyassa berries. Including the trunk. And the glove compartment. Maybe a couple strapped on the hood.
R&D 4: *Sigh* Well, can we do a concentrated form? You know, one one of those nasty drinks that never mixes properly?
R&D 1: You mean the ones that leave a mound of purple sludge at the bottom of the glass, even if you stir it until your arm comes out of its socket? And then you have to take our overpriced glucosmaine supplements until your arm heals?
R&D 4: Yeah, those.
R&D 3: We could do that. Then you’d only have to drink about 2 oil drums of heineyassa juice a day. However, you WILL have the strongest, thickest, and most manageable nose hair on the block.
R&D 2: By 3 percent.
R&D 1: Literally by a nose hair.
R&D 3: One other problem: They’re grown in Florida.
R&D 2: So?
R&D 4: Yeah, that’s bad. Florida is too pedestrian. We need to come up with some exotic sounding locale where the natives are shrouded in a mystical aura simply because they’re not American.
R&D 2: People who wouldn’t be caught dead eating heineyassa berries, but can be safely exploited from a distance.
R&D 1: Right, and make sure the label has a lot of "spiritual" looking symbols like birds and people dancing. Or some crap like that. I’m telling ya, people eat that sh*t up.
R&D 2: They sure do. Hell, if they’ll eat heineyassa berries they’ll eat anything.
(Everyone laughs as they pile into an SUV and then drive over to McDonald's for Big Macs. With extra large fries.)
*************************************************************
Can't you just see it? Can't you? Huhn? What do you mean "No?" Ah, go eat some heineyassa berries, why doncha.
Another thing: it always gives me pause when I see products which have supposedly been in existence since the dawn of man, yet amazingly no one has heard of them. You know, ones like "Raphael's Toenail Tonic" or "Trenton Tom's Backwater Soda Pop." These are the guys that proudly broadcast their longevity on the label with phrases like "Since 1543," "Family Owned and Operated Since 1102," or "The Trusted Name in Ear Lobe Ointments Since 5,648 B.C."
Now, I'm all for the little guy and privately owned small businesses. Not every cookie (for example) has to be tasteless mega-conglomerate paperboard like Chips Ahoy! On the other hand, doesn't it strike you as a little curious that some dude's family has been making anise flavored tea biscuits since before the Salem witch trials and yet they've remained relatively anonymous? Wouldn't an impressive feat like that seem to demand some national attention?
How have they managed to fly under the radar so long? Is there a cookie conspiracy with "Big Cookie" operatives who systematically eliminate anyone who threatens to bring "Andy's Anise Delights" to the masses? Are the owners of Andy's consciously keeping their business "small" and resisting larger forms of distribution, or do their cookies just suck? Most small businesses are lucky to last a year or two, and yet somehow the unknown biscuit guys from Hoboken have been semi-flourishing for half a millenium. How does that work?
And don't forget the obligatory, self-congratulatory "Our Story" which has to appear on the back of EVERY single organic, "homemade" product out there, with the squiggly lines that look like they were drawn by a two year old riding a bronco and the half-ass pictures of cows strewn throughout the borders. Nevermind that we've got cows on a bag of licorice or a jar of coconut oil. Cows are organisms, you know, and therefore "organic."
Is it possible, and I know this is a crazy thought, that some of these companies aren't quite as small, folksy, and "quaint" as the packaging would suggest? Is it possible that some of the "organic" imaging is just a little bit cynical and calculated? Are all these companies really motivated by "lifting your spirits and purifying your mind?" More to the point, can the "down home community values" embodied by such products exist comfortably with the capitalist/consumer mentality and the demands of being a publicly traded company in corporate America?
Hey, I just ask the questions; I don't have the answers, folks.
* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, because they can't hear anything lodged way up Big Pharma's backside.
First of all, does every stray herb, mineral, plant, fruit, vine, weed, berry, thorn, bacteria, bean, and clump of dirt to ever grace Gaea’s green earth have "miraculous" healing properties that some remote tribe has utilized for "thousands of years?" It seems that even the ones that look like they could kill you deader than my site traffic (stinging nettle, anyone?) possess amazing "regenerative and healing" properties. Wow! Fancy that.
You would THINK there would be at least one or two herbs that just f*ck your ass up and don’t have much to recommend them, but health food stores give me the distinct impression that every herb does something beneficial, if you look hard enough. What, none of them are just inert? You know, they don’t do a damn thing one way or the other? Apparently not. I think when all else fails, they just slap the old "refreshes your spirits" on the label. I normally leave that to my bartender, but hey, who can argue with "refreshes your spirits?"
Also, why is it always "thousands of years" of health benefits? I guess "cooked up by our marketing team a few weeks ago" just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Can’t you just see the research team at Eden’s Natural Garden of Bountiful Organic Harvest coming up with their latest "miraculous" product? "
*************************************************************
R&D Guy 1: Hey, what the hell are these berries?
R&D Guy 2: I don’t know, but they taste like ass.
R&D Guy 3: That means they’re bursting with anti-oxidizing properties.
R&D Guy 2: Tastes more like pro-ass-tasting properties.
R&D Guy 1: If this is anti-oxidizing, I am definitely pro-oxidation. Go oxidation!
R&D Guy 4: Those are heineyassa berries. They’re extremely rare.
R&D 1: Thank god.
R&D 2: So what do they do?
R&D 3: Well, nothing is proven, but several studies suggest heineyassa berries may increase the tensile strength of one’s nostril hair by as much as 3 percent.
R&D 4: Ok, it’s not much, but I guess we can work with it. What kind of dosage are we talking in order to achieve the desired effect?
R&D 3: Six hundred and sixty eight billion grams a day.
R&D 2: Six hundred and sixty eight billion grams!!!
R&D 3: Roughly equivalent to filling a ’73 Gremlin with heineyassa berries. Including the trunk. And the glove compartment. Maybe a couple strapped on the hood.
R&D 4: *Sigh* Well, can we do a concentrated form? You know, one one of those nasty drinks that never mixes properly?
R&D 1: You mean the ones that leave a mound of purple sludge at the bottom of the glass, even if you stir it until your arm comes out of its socket? And then you have to take our overpriced glucosmaine supplements until your arm heals?
R&D 4: Yeah, those.
R&D 3: We could do that. Then you’d only have to drink about 2 oil drums of heineyassa juice a day. However, you WILL have the strongest, thickest, and most manageable nose hair on the block.
R&D 2: By 3 percent.
R&D 1: Literally by a nose hair.
R&D 3: One other problem: They’re grown in Florida.
R&D 2: So?
R&D 4: Yeah, that’s bad. Florida is too pedestrian. We need to come up with some exotic sounding locale where the natives are shrouded in a mystical aura simply because they’re not American.
R&D 2: People who wouldn’t be caught dead eating heineyassa berries, but can be safely exploited from a distance.
R&D 1: Right, and make sure the label has a lot of "spiritual" looking symbols like birds and people dancing. Or some crap like that. I’m telling ya, people eat that sh*t up.
R&D 2: They sure do. Hell, if they’ll eat heineyassa berries they’ll eat anything.
(Everyone laughs as they pile into an SUV and then drive over to McDonald's for Big Macs. With extra large fries.)
*************************************************************
Can't you just see it? Can't you? Huhn? What do you mean "No?" Ah, go eat some heineyassa berries, why doncha.
Another thing: it always gives me pause when I see products which have supposedly been in existence since the dawn of man, yet amazingly no one has heard of them. You know, ones like "Raphael's Toenail Tonic" or "Trenton Tom's Backwater Soda Pop." These are the guys that proudly broadcast their longevity on the label with phrases like "Since 1543," "Family Owned and Operated Since 1102," or "The Trusted Name in Ear Lobe Ointments Since 5,648 B.C."
Now, I'm all for the little guy and privately owned small businesses. Not every cookie (for example) has to be tasteless mega-conglomerate paperboard like Chips Ahoy! On the other hand, doesn't it strike you as a little curious that some dude's family has been making anise flavored tea biscuits since before the Salem witch trials and yet they've remained relatively anonymous? Wouldn't an impressive feat like that seem to demand some national attention?
How have they managed to fly under the radar so long? Is there a cookie conspiracy with "Big Cookie" operatives who systematically eliminate anyone who threatens to bring "Andy's Anise Delights" to the masses? Are the owners of Andy's consciously keeping their business "small" and resisting larger forms of distribution, or do their cookies just suck? Most small businesses are lucky to last a year or two, and yet somehow the unknown biscuit guys from Hoboken have been semi-flourishing for half a millenium. How does that work?
And don't forget the obligatory, self-congratulatory "Our Story" which has to appear on the back of EVERY single organic, "homemade" product out there, with the squiggly lines that look like they were drawn by a two year old riding a bronco and the half-ass pictures of cows strewn throughout the borders. Nevermind that we've got cows on a bag of licorice or a jar of coconut oil. Cows are organisms, you know, and therefore "organic."
Is it possible, and I know this is a crazy thought, that some of these companies aren't quite as small, folksy, and "quaint" as the packaging would suggest? Is it possible that some of the "organic" imaging is just a little bit cynical and calculated? Are all these companies really motivated by "lifting your spirits and purifying your mind?" More to the point, can the "down home community values" embodied by such products exist comfortably with the capitalist/consumer mentality and the demands of being a publicly traded company in corporate America?
Hey, I just ask the questions; I don't have the answers, folks.
* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, because they can't hear anything lodged way up Big Pharma's backside.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
She Sells by the Seashore: the SI Swimsuit Issue
So the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue came out this month. I personally haven’t picked it up, probably because I don’t want to get a double hernia from its sheer mass. However, over the past few days I have walked past several newsstands with extra-large pallets piled high with the SI swimsuit extravaganza. Are they trying to tell me something?
Anyway, when I see the cover, it invariably gets me thinking. Usually I start thinking something like, “How do the necklaces and hair always fall right where they’re supposed to when the models emerge from the ocean? That never works for me.”
After I mull that over for a couple of hours (or 6 or 7), I begin to muse nostalgically about how far we’ve come from ye olden days of yore. My, how things have changed since the innocent wide-eyed early days of chicks in see-through mesh bikinis!
Back when I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, the SI swimsuit issue featured a paltry 8 or 10 page supermodel spread in an otherwise regular, boring, mind-numbing issue of Sports Illustrated. I actually felt sorry for the “regular” athletes who were featured in a swimsuit issue back then. Something tells me not many readers were flipping the pages furiously to get to the all-star backgammon spread on the opposite side of Christie Brinkley’s latest tensile-strength experiment in the emerging field of nano-fiber technology.
Of course, the situation gradually changed over the years. After realizing that the swimsuit issue sold about, oh, 50 ga-jillion times better than the rest of the year combined, SI had a startling epiphany: men like pictures of backgammon tournaments. Ha! I’m kidding of course. The editors realized they could fill a WHOLE magazine with pictures of bikini-clad nymphets, and men would gladly plunk down a shekel or two for leering rights.
Meanwhile, back in prehistoric times, if you were an ardent bikini fan you were forced to suffer further hardships like some kind of voyeuristic Job. Not only did Sports Illustrated limit your bathing suit fun to a measly 8-10 pages per year, but you had to actually purchase your issue well within the standard seven days allotted for weekly publications. If not, you were S.O.L., buddy boy.
Nowadays they leave millions of copies of the swimsuit issue on the stands well until December, but back then it was just another regular issue ready to be replaced in seven days’ time. There was nothing more soul-crushing as a 13 year old boy than riding your bike a grueling 2 miles to the nearest 7-11 and running directly to the magazine section, only to be greeted by a frighteningly tight close-up of Wayne Gretzky’s face contorted in agony and replete with thousands of glistening mircobeads of sweat.
And that’s because Wayne Gretzky had made the trip to 7-11 and was pissed he missed the swimsuit issue too!!! If somehow you managed to dodge Gretzky’s wrath, you could pick up the latest copy for yourself only to find an “action” shot of some dumb-ass tennis player on the cover. I mean really. Who cares? But that’s how it went if the precious seven-day window elapsed before you wrangled up your own copy. (To tell the truth, I never lived through the harrowing ordeal described above; my older brother had a subscription to SI.)
Another thing I wonder about the swimsuit issue is if they’re ever in danger of running out of cute titles for the pictorials. You know the ones I mean: “California Dreamin’,” “Kissed by the Sun,” “No Strings Attached,” “Throwing in the Towel,” “Bahama Mamas,” and stuff like that. Surely after 30 years of this silliness they must be running low. Do they ever have to recycle? It’s not like the target audience looks at the words for more than .0006 milliseconds anyway.
I suspect they’re going to be scraping the bottom of the title-barrel soon, and it won’t be long before we see pictorials with names like, “More Locals on Boats Gawking at Models,” “Stuff You’ll Never See a Woman Wear on a Real Beach, Ever,” “Caught in a Fishing Net… Again!” and “Lots of Lots of Sand Strategically Glued to Lots and Lots of Butts.” Hell, I think I like those titles better anyway. At least they’re honest.
Speaking of the guys on the fishing boats, I always think they’re poor locals who really want to beat the hell out of the camera men and chase all the models away. After all, I’m sure they’re thrilled by the presence of these “Sirens of the Surf” who make about as much on a bad day as they made all last year.
I think the models and photographers are at least tacitly aware of this, and that would partially explain why they relentlessly try to convince the public what hard work it is being uber-glamorous. They lead sickeningly charmed lives and deep down they feel they need to justify themselves to people like you and me who work real jobs. How many times have you heard these models on TV blathering on about how “freezing” the water was when they did a recent photo shoot on the beach of (for example) Puerto Rico?
Really? Puerto Rico? Isn’t it like 80 degrees there year round? Nope! If you believe these guys, it never inches above 18 degrees Fahrenheit the day the SI swimsuit models are there. And they’re always forced to stay in the water for 67 hours straight! With NO FOOD or bathroom breaks!!! Then, after we hear about that, we always get treated to some obligatory footage of someone rushing over to swaddle a model in a blanket ‘cause she’s so “cold” from being in the water. Man, I’ll bet the workers down at Wal-Mart are relieved they don’t have to do THAT job.
To be fair, I suppose the supermodels have to portray themselves as put upon, because let’s face it. If you really knew how much one of these cuties makes for rolling around with a starfish taped to her ass, you’d want to blow your brains out.
Hmmmm. I guess we haven’t really come so far after all.
Anyway, when I see the cover, it invariably gets me thinking. Usually I start thinking something like, “How do the necklaces and hair always fall right where they’re supposed to when the models emerge from the ocean? That never works for me.”
After I mull that over for a couple of hours (or 6 or 7), I begin to muse nostalgically about how far we’ve come from ye olden days of yore. My, how things have changed since the innocent wide-eyed early days of chicks in see-through mesh bikinis!
Back when I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, the SI swimsuit issue featured a paltry 8 or 10 page supermodel spread in an otherwise regular, boring, mind-numbing issue of Sports Illustrated. I actually felt sorry for the “regular” athletes who were featured in a swimsuit issue back then. Something tells me not many readers were flipping the pages furiously to get to the all-star backgammon spread on the opposite side of Christie Brinkley’s latest tensile-strength experiment in the emerging field of nano-fiber technology.
Of course, the situation gradually changed over the years. After realizing that the swimsuit issue sold about, oh, 50 ga-jillion times better than the rest of the year combined, SI had a startling epiphany: men like pictures of backgammon tournaments. Ha! I’m kidding of course. The editors realized they could fill a WHOLE magazine with pictures of bikini-clad nymphets, and men would gladly plunk down a shekel or two for leering rights.
Meanwhile, back in prehistoric times, if you were an ardent bikini fan you were forced to suffer further hardships like some kind of voyeuristic Job. Not only did Sports Illustrated limit your bathing suit fun to a measly 8-10 pages per year, but you had to actually purchase your issue well within the standard seven days allotted for weekly publications. If not, you were S.O.L., buddy boy.
Nowadays they leave millions of copies of the swimsuit issue on the stands well until December, but back then it was just another regular issue ready to be replaced in seven days’ time. There was nothing more soul-crushing as a 13 year old boy than riding your bike a grueling 2 miles to the nearest 7-11 and running directly to the magazine section, only to be greeted by a frighteningly tight close-up of Wayne Gretzky’s face contorted in agony and replete with thousands of glistening mircobeads of sweat.
And that’s because Wayne Gretzky had made the trip to 7-11 and was pissed he missed the swimsuit issue too!!! If somehow you managed to dodge Gretzky’s wrath, you could pick up the latest copy for yourself only to find an “action” shot of some dumb-ass tennis player on the cover. I mean really. Who cares? But that’s how it went if the precious seven-day window elapsed before you wrangled up your own copy. (To tell the truth, I never lived through the harrowing ordeal described above; my older brother had a subscription to SI.)
Another thing I wonder about the swimsuit issue is if they’re ever in danger of running out of cute titles for the pictorials. You know the ones I mean: “California Dreamin’,” “Kissed by the Sun,” “No Strings Attached,” “Throwing in the Towel,” “Bahama Mamas,” and stuff like that. Surely after 30 years of this silliness they must be running low. Do they ever have to recycle? It’s not like the target audience looks at the words for more than .0006 milliseconds anyway.
I suspect they’re going to be scraping the bottom of the title-barrel soon, and it won’t be long before we see pictorials with names like, “More Locals on Boats Gawking at Models,” “Stuff You’ll Never See a Woman Wear on a Real Beach, Ever,” “Caught in a Fishing Net… Again!” and “Lots of Lots of Sand Strategically Glued to Lots and Lots of Butts.” Hell, I think I like those titles better anyway. At least they’re honest.
Speaking of the guys on the fishing boats, I always think they’re poor locals who really want to beat the hell out of the camera men and chase all the models away. After all, I’m sure they’re thrilled by the presence of these “Sirens of the Surf” who make about as much on a bad day as they made all last year.
I think the models and photographers are at least tacitly aware of this, and that would partially explain why they relentlessly try to convince the public what hard work it is being uber-glamorous. They lead sickeningly charmed lives and deep down they feel they need to justify themselves to people like you and me who work real jobs. How many times have you heard these models on TV blathering on about how “freezing” the water was when they did a recent photo shoot on the beach of (for example) Puerto Rico?
Really? Puerto Rico? Isn’t it like 80 degrees there year round? Nope! If you believe these guys, it never inches above 18 degrees Fahrenheit the day the SI swimsuit models are there. And they’re always forced to stay in the water for 67 hours straight! With NO FOOD or bathroom breaks!!! Then, after we hear about that, we always get treated to some obligatory footage of someone rushing over to swaddle a model in a blanket ‘cause she’s so “cold” from being in the water. Man, I’ll bet the workers down at Wal-Mart are relieved they don’t have to do THAT job.
To be fair, I suppose the supermodels have to portray themselves as put upon, because let’s face it. If you really knew how much one of these cuties makes for rolling around with a starfish taped to her ass, you’d want to blow your brains out.
Hmmmm. I guess we haven’t really come so far after all.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Phrased Out, Part 3: "Sexy"
AKA: I'm Taking Sexy Back.
This week, in our ongoing series about words that need to be excised from common parlance, we examine the word "sexy." Now, don't go spilling your fat-free mocha-chinos all over your laptops, I'm NOT talking about "sexy" as in the Victoria's Secret ad "What is sexy?" although something tells me that's less of a question than it is a command.
No, what I'm speaking of are the corporate tools and other dunderheads-at-large who insist on using "sexy" to refer to things that are about as far removed from actual sex as a pack of fanboys arguing over the recent decision to change Clea's costume from purple to off-purple in the upcoming big-screen adaptation of "Dr. Strange."
At some point, someone decided that "sexy" could be used metaphorically to describe ANYTHNG viewed as "new, alluring, exciting or scintillating," especially in the realm of business. It doesn't even matter if the subject in question is diametrically opposed to sex, like a picture of Donald Trump doing the frug in a polka-dot speedo. If there is something frighteningly boring, corporate, or unsexy, you can be certain some creatively-bankrupt drone will plaster the label "sexy" on it to in effort to artificially induce excitement.
As a result, the following items (and many more) have become "sexy" under this terrifying new worldview: spread sheets, computer software, casserole dishes, toenail fungus cream, toxic waste dumps, stocks and bonds, bathroom porcelain, Taco Bell coupons, slide projector transparencies, mp3 technology, Kenny G, cheese doodles, office buildings, Hong Kong Phooey toilet brushes (ok, maybe that last one IS a little bit sexy), and just about anything else you can think of. As a result, the word has lost all meaning, vitality and potency. It could probably use a little Viagra itself.*
Like most of the words we examine here, "sexy," as applied to the business-world,was probably pretty clever and novel the first few times it was used in a non-traditional sense. For example, "We are unveiling a sexy new business model this week" probably sounded pretty good the first 9,547,648 times it was said. It also makes sense at a deeper level, if you figure about 98 percent of the time media and big businesses are trying to exploit our baser impulses in a continuing effort to fuel the engine of consumerism.
Consumerism and sex are so deeply intertwined in this country I suppose it was only a matter of time before they were completely fused in everyday language. After all, it's only a hop, skip and a hump from dubbing a sheet of paper in a magazine "sexy" to calling a deep dish pizza or a 4th quarter sales graph the same thing. (By extension, a pie chart, which conceptually combines both pizza AND graphs, is probably about the sexiest damn thing there out there. I often find myself in need a cold shower after reading USA TODAY'S breakdown of where we're buying our odor-eaters this week.)
But I digress. Most of these stooges aren't saying "sexy" because of some deeper symbolic intertwining of sexuality, consumerism and commerce. No, in all likelihood they're merely parroting someone else with more birdseed and brighter plumage who they heard squawking the same empty adjective while hovering around the corporate birdbath. True to their nature, these scavengers couldn't resist the urge to pluck the semi-digested linguistic morsel from the larger bird's mouth and roll it around on their own tongues for awhile. Mind you, half the flavor had already been sucked out, but hey, no one ever accused these birds of having discerning palettes.
The bottom line is this: Despite what you're being told, flow charts aren't sexy. Frozen, imitation bison cutlets aren't sexy. Your local paper's obituary column isn't sexy. Heidi Klum wearing a French maid costume at the breakfast table and arguing with a bikini-clad Jessica Alba over who gets the last of the waffles before settling their differences with a good old-fashioned boysenberry syrup fight isn't sexy. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention on that last one.**
There's nothing wrong with trying to spice up everyday language with words that don't normally apply in a given context. However, when it's done repeatedly and with little thought, words like "sexy" quickly devolve into cliches and meaningless job-speak with little impact on anyone. Let's stop neutering words like "sexy" by using them indiscriminately to prop up our flaccid conversations. I think it's time to leave "sexy" where it belongs, at the NiteOwlz All Night Waffle House.
Oh, and one more thing: I'm glad Justin Timberlake has been single-handedly "bringing sexy back" given the relative dearth of sexually-oriented material in the media. How refreshing!
Footnotes:
* I'd also like to stress here that I'm NOT talking about infusing typically non-sexual things WITH sexuality, like painting erotic art on the side of a toaster, or running toaster ads with lingerie models in them. I am specifically objecting to people who think the toaster's extra heat setting qualifies as a "SEXY!" new feature. Well, it's not sexy unless you're intimately involved with your toaster, I suppose. For most of us non-toaster-philes, it's just another setting for us to accidentally burn our toast.
** I am aware that "Heidi/Jessica" is a gender-centric example. If I had tried to make a universal example, or presented an "or" scenario featuring Brad Pitt and Jude Law, I would have seriously diminished the comedic effect of the passage. SO THERE!
This week, in our ongoing series about words that need to be excised from common parlance, we examine the word "sexy." Now, don't go spilling your fat-free mocha-chinos all over your laptops, I'm NOT talking about "sexy" as in the Victoria's Secret ad "What is sexy?" although something tells me that's less of a question than it is a command.
No, what I'm speaking of are the corporate tools and other dunderheads-at-large who insist on using "sexy" to refer to things that are about as far removed from actual sex as a pack of fanboys arguing over the recent decision to change Clea's costume from purple to off-purple in the upcoming big-screen adaptation of "Dr. Strange."
At some point, someone decided that "sexy" could be used metaphorically to describe ANYTHNG viewed as "new, alluring, exciting or scintillating," especially in the realm of business. It doesn't even matter if the subject in question is diametrically opposed to sex, like a picture of Donald Trump doing the frug in a polka-dot speedo. If there is something frighteningly boring, corporate, or unsexy, you can be certain some creatively-bankrupt drone will plaster the label "sexy" on it to in effort to artificially induce excitement.
As a result, the following items (and many more) have become "sexy" under this terrifying new worldview: spread sheets, computer software, casserole dishes, toenail fungus cream, toxic waste dumps, stocks and bonds, bathroom porcelain, Taco Bell coupons, slide projector transparencies, mp3 technology, Kenny G, cheese doodles, office buildings, Hong Kong Phooey toilet brushes (ok, maybe that last one IS a little bit sexy), and just about anything else you can think of. As a result, the word has lost all meaning, vitality and potency. It could probably use a little Viagra itself.*
Like most of the words we examine here, "sexy," as applied to the business-world,was probably pretty clever and novel the first few times it was used in a non-traditional sense. For example, "We are unveiling a sexy new business model this week" probably sounded pretty good the first 9,547,648 times it was said. It also makes sense at a deeper level, if you figure about 98 percent of the time media and big businesses are trying to exploit our baser impulses in a continuing effort to fuel the engine of consumerism.
Consumerism and sex are so deeply intertwined in this country I suppose it was only a matter of time before they were completely fused in everyday language. After all, it's only a hop, skip and a hump from dubbing a sheet of paper in a magazine "sexy" to calling a deep dish pizza or a 4th quarter sales graph the same thing. (By extension, a pie chart, which conceptually combines both pizza AND graphs, is probably about the sexiest damn thing there out there. I often find myself in need a cold shower after reading USA TODAY'S breakdown of where we're buying our odor-eaters this week.)
But I digress. Most of these stooges aren't saying "sexy" because of some deeper symbolic intertwining of sexuality, consumerism and commerce. No, in all likelihood they're merely parroting someone else with more birdseed and brighter plumage who they heard squawking the same empty adjective while hovering around the corporate birdbath. True to their nature, these scavengers couldn't resist the urge to pluck the semi-digested linguistic morsel from the larger bird's mouth and roll it around on their own tongues for awhile. Mind you, half the flavor had already been sucked out, but hey, no one ever accused these birds of having discerning palettes.
The bottom line is this: Despite what you're being told, flow charts aren't sexy. Frozen, imitation bison cutlets aren't sexy. Your local paper's obituary column isn't sexy. Heidi Klum wearing a French maid costume at the breakfast table and arguing with a bikini-clad Jessica Alba over who gets the last of the waffles before settling their differences with a good old-fashioned boysenberry syrup fight isn't sexy. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention on that last one.**
There's nothing wrong with trying to spice up everyday language with words that don't normally apply in a given context. However, when it's done repeatedly and with little thought, words like "sexy" quickly devolve into cliches and meaningless job-speak with little impact on anyone. Let's stop neutering words like "sexy" by using them indiscriminately to prop up our flaccid conversations. I think it's time to leave "sexy" where it belongs, at the NiteOwlz All Night Waffle House.
Oh, and one more thing: I'm glad Justin Timberlake has been single-handedly "bringing sexy back" given the relative dearth of sexually-oriented material in the media. How refreshing!
Footnotes:
* I'd also like to stress here that I'm NOT talking about infusing typically non-sexual things WITH sexuality, like painting erotic art on the side of a toaster, or running toaster ads with lingerie models in them. I am specifically objecting to people who think the toaster's extra heat setting qualifies as a "SEXY!" new feature. Well, it's not sexy unless you're intimately involved with your toaster, I suppose. For most of us non-toaster-philes, it's just another setting for us to accidentally burn our toast.
** I am aware that "Heidi/Jessica" is a gender-centric example. If I had tried to make a universal example, or presented an "or" scenario featuring Brad Pitt and Jude Law, I would have seriously diminished the comedic effect of the passage. SO THERE!
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