Danger: Glossy Flyers Ahead

I'm a graduate student and I also teach. One thing I've noticed about the campus I work at is that it is absolutely littered with flyer advertisements. There's everything including the to-be-expected "looking for a roommate" and "selling my car". However, there is another type of flyer, a much more dangerous one.

These flyers are the glossy little cards that usually have a half or fully naked glistening woman in some sort of contorted animal-like position. It's a great attention grabber, obviously. It's also very affective to throw these glossy flyers down stair wells (which already happen to be quite slippery (add to that the scenario of the occasional Florida downpour)) or to lick the back of these tasty advertisements and slap them onto the back of bathroom stall doors or to the inside of elevator doors (something nice to look at in both occasions). It's also especially brilliant when the distributors of these flyers (who are mysteriously never seen in the act) leave one flyer on each and every desk inside of a classroom. It's just wonderful! They leave me some great teaching material.

Not only do I have to physically see these things at school where I both work and try to study as a student, but now they've infiltrated my Facebook account. The image below is a cut-and-paste from a side advertisement on a wall-to-wall conversation page on Facebook. It's lovely how the people at Facebook match up your zipcode to these ads (I wonder if people in small towns have Wet Wet Wednesdays). This was plastered (literally) right next to where I was typing. And I find it interesting how throughout many of these social websites there are options to “report” an image or a post that another user uploads, but not for advertisements that we really have no other choice but to look at. Quite interesting.

I know the image below is small and obviously a scan of one of the dreadful flyers I've mentioned before but the woman in the picture is clearly naked and covered in suds. I'm sure this would offend more than just a few people. Or maybe I'm wrong. Either way, if people (especially women) are just ignoring these images or see these images and shrug them off as unimportant, trivial, not allowing the images to affect them, it is still sad that these images are allowed regardless of the public's reaction. Though how many images of women covered in soap suds, degraded, and in submission can a person see without being affected, I am not sure, but I don't think it takes too many of these images to cause an imprint.

WET WET WEDNESDAYS



@ Club VIP
(on the corner of 79th and 7th ave)

18 to party
21 to swallow

FOR MORE INFO CALL
(yea...I'm not going to advertise for these idiots, sorry)

Are You Thorney?

Recently I filled out a survey for the American Family Association (AFA). A friend on MySpace posted the following bulletin:

The AFA (American Family Association) is expecting an overwhelming majority of respondents to say that they would be 'less likely' to do business with a company if they knew it supported the "homosexual agenda" - whatever that is. So far, they are getting the results they seek. Of course, they are only sending it where they will get the expected results. Let's change the outcome by completing the 1-question survey and sending it to everyone we know who is tired of this archaic and hateful way of thinking. Follow the link to take action on this important issue.

Well, needless to say I did. However, the APA took my e-mail address when I confirmed my vote (which goes against their philosophy) and just sent me a propaganda e-mail telling me to boycott Ford. However, that's not really what interests me... What does interest me is an advertisement (obviously from a company that they endorse and which financially supports the APA's political agenda). Here is the ad:

Mother's Day
May 13th
Whether it's a Crown of Thorns necklace or something else for Mom, Samaritan Arts has hundreds of Christian jewelry ideas. For that gift they will always remember...

What a beautiful, heartfelt idea. Let's give our mothers a crown of thorns to wear around their necks! Metaphorically it does represent the constant struggle, discrimination, and suffrage of working women with families and the blatant pressure placed on them by society and organizations like this one, which endorse the "nuclear" (see Jane Caputi for her discussion on this topic) family.