Attractive woman selling you stuff
I read a lot of news. So, it came to me as a bit of a surprise that CNN has been doing nothing but trying to explain how “important” their story about the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is. After “reading” through their article and numerous other articles that have attempted to “write” about this story, almost always with a HUGE picture of very attractive supermodels, I get the picture. There was a fashion show put out by Victoria’s Secret, a store that sells ladies lingerie to women who want to look attractive to their partners after things have already moved to the point where they really don’t have to do anything to make the mood get to the next point. I mean, honestly, if I’m in a situation where a woman is now in her underwear, chances are pretty good she doesn’t have to convince me that I should be moving to, well, for lack of better terms, the next “base”. If I read things wrong at that time, then something’s seriously wrong with me, with her, or with the human species and academic mating rituals.
But let’s break down what’s really going on with this “fashion” show. It’s a bunch of very attractive women, walking around in their under garments, trying to get people to think this would be a really good purchase in the future. That’s really it. They’re not developing a better solar panel to collect energy. They’re not helping us figure out which presidential candidate is going to lie to us more than the other. They’re not even helping us find a potential mate. They’re walking around in their underwear being gawked at by guys across the country.
Cause let’s face it. This show might be watched by women thinking, “that outfit looks nice and maybe if I buy it, I might look like that multimillion dollar an hour supermodel” but it’s mostly being watched by guys who are thinking, “man, I really should have majored in something other than sociology in college cause a girl like that is never going to talk to me and my sorry ass bank account.” And, of course, there’s a huge segment of guys who are probably watching that show alone, in the dark….
But great television it’s not. It’s like watching the Miss America Pageant and saying you watch it because you support programs that provide college scholarships to enterprising young women. No one buys that. No one even buys it when the pageant tries to pretend that’s why the pageant exists. It’s a vehicle to sell stuff in the way we always sell it. With sex.
So, I’m glad the show was the number one watched show in the country, just as much as I’m glad that Twilight is the number one movie, and every top seller on the New York Times bestseller list is a young adult book because Americans have become too stupid to read books for adults.
But that doesn’t mean I’m really happy about it. So leave me alone as I turn off the lights and watch the second half of this underwear advertisement show I taped so I could watch it alone. Check back with me in about a half hour. We’ll talk about literature then.