Don't Mind Me...

T

I met Jen at Froggies after work last night for a bit of dinner and adult bev action. The bar TV was, of course, blazing away with sports and lots of mystifying ads.

In sports, the Anaheim Ducks were up against the Chicago Black Hawks.

• Hockey season ALREADY?! It's still baseball season fer Bast's sake.
• There's a hockey team in Southern Cal? No c'mon. RILLY?! They're playing ICEhockey in a part of the country known for palm trees and perfect mid-70 degree days. There's no snow there...not a bit. Also too, ice doesn't keep well in 74º weather. Not generally. I wonder if they know that.

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The first ad was for a resort named Sandals. Now that I'm in vaca conjuring mode, I pay heed to ads for holiday destinations. What was most obvs about the Sandals ads? 

1. That all their customers are in their twenties or, if older, they're obscenely healthy, fit forty somethings. I'm guessing that 50 is the new Logan's Run, eh?
2. Everyone’s white. Every last blessed vacationer's rockin' the 50's era Crayola fleshtone or lighter. The only person of color I spied was, yup, a waiter.
3. Oh and all the babes wear bikinis.
4. Everyone’s coupled off—boy/girl. They'll apparently have none of that wickedly decadent girl/girl or boy/boy action at this resort. 

So then, a simple TV ad has informed me of precisely where I will NEVER, EVER book a getaway.
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The second ad was for a car insurance company called Endurance. They had a spokes-dominatrix. She was kitted out in mid-thigh height black leather boots, a snug, ultra fitted black pencil skirt and a bejeweled black tank top. Unsurprisingly, she was sporting long bleach blonde tresses. With the rest of the outfit, platinum woulda been a far better choice than the Mid-West farm girl, yellow shade.

This is an ad for some boring ass car insurance so I guess they had to tone down the B&D look ever so slightly.

According to Endurance, she’s an auto expert. OK then. I guess all one needs, to be an auto expert is to be a bottle blonde, curvaceous babe, dress like a dungeon mistress and have a father who drove race cars.

OK then. Good to know.
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Ya know, I’ve got nothing against folks dying their hair. ’Course not. I've had, and will have again, purple streaks mixed into my head of dark brown bunny fur. Whatever floats your dinghy, I say.

Here’s what rankles and puzzles me—why, why, why do so damn many women go blonde? Specifically, that mid-range yellow hue. If your life’s goal is to be an ornamental idiot, talking head on Fox, you’ve no choice. I get that. There are other places to work and other gigs to grab though.

Also, one look in the hair color aisle at your local CVS shows that there are a zillion or so other choices. 

Even the prime grade hippy emporium, Sundance, features a blond—an obvs bottle babe at that—on their covers. It’s not just Sex that moves product—Blonde Sells. There seems to be shedloads of studies done and pixels devoted to this blonde supremacy thing. It all seems come down to, basically, yellow is the color the eye first notices.

Jeet Heer at sans everything has an interesting and fun post entitled, Betty and Veronica: The Cultural Politics of Hair Colour. Well worth the read.

Thus ends my kvetch-a-thon for this wonderfully, finally, cool (chilly even!) Friday morning. Cheers!