I can't believe I'm asking this. It goes against every fiber of my masculinity. Straight men disagree on a lot of subjects, but if there's one fact we agree on, it's that half-naked women are fantastic. I'm no exception to this rule. Most of my day is spent thinking about women, whether I want to or not. Sometimes I see a ham sandwich and think, "You know what that ham sandwich needs? A sexy woman holding it."
But enough is enough, dear reader. As painful and hypocritical as it is for me to request this, can we please have fewer sexy women in advertisements?
Hold on, men! Don't throw punches at me yet! Let me explain. There's such a thing as too much titillation. Everything is best in moderation, but in the last decade, advertisements have broken this golden rule too often. If you ate a delicious steak every day for a month, you'd get bored with steak. The same goes for scantily-clad women in advertisements. When you see dozens of sexy girls every day, you become immune to them.
I don't want to be immune to sexy girls, reader. If I see a photo of a woman in a bikini fighting off a bear with a hockey stick, I want to be excited by that. I don't want to roll my eyes and turn the page. But advertisers have forced me to be bored by it. She's fighting a bear! With a hockey stick! And I'm bored! What the hell! This change in my attitude has occurred because it's impossible to go five minutes without seeing an ad featuring a scantily-clad woman.
How many half-naked women do I see in a day? When I drive to work, I see a handful of billboards with scantily-clad women. When I read the newspaper, I see five or six sexy ads, and that's a small amount compared to TV. Any TV show I watch, movie I see, or magazine I read will add dozens more half-nude women to my subconscious collection. By the end of the day, is it any wonder that I'd rather watch 1987 Super Bowl highlights on ESPN Classic than a sitcom starring Pam Anderson and her fake boobs?
The other day I saw a magazine ad for tampons that had a woman in an extremely revealing nightgown. This does not help anyone, Tampax. When I think of women menstruating (Which, granted, is never, but still), I don't need the image of a sexy woman with a "come hither" expression thrown in there.
The other week I watched the new James Bond movie, which has Eva Green as the Bond girl. She's one of the most gorgeous actresses alive, but you know what? I didn't really care. WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, ADVERTISERS?
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy real women, but fantasy women have become boring to me. Sex may sell, but I am officially oversold on fabricated sexuality. I know pop culture moves in cycles, and sooner or later everyone else will get bored and force advertisers to change their campaigns, but I wish they'd do it a little sooner. If I start getting bored of gorgeous women in real life, I'm going to storm into Omnicom and Interpublic's ad headquarters and start bashing some heads.
There's still hope, though. Britney Spears, who started this latest sex sells trend with her schoolgirl outfit music video in 1998, is now a sagging, Cheeto-gobbling, sweatpants-wearing mom. Could this fall of the original beast be an omen? Probably not. But it gives me faith in the powers that be.
This sexy advertising trend better curb soon. Otherwise I might turn into some stodgy old alt-weekly newspaper writer who works 20 hours a day and has little interest in getting married or forming a family.
Oh. Wait. Damn it! It's already started.
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