So outside of the gates to my venerable institution of higher education is an ad. It features two airbrushed beauties in jeans and what appears to be Crisco locked in a passionate, if strangely agressive, embrace. If we ignore all the standard neofeminism about body image and subconsciously fuckedup sexuality, which I do, because to be honest if one was to protest every distorted image that bombards the senses through advertising in public space we'd never get anywhere, there remains the fact that usually when I see this ad, it's 8 am, freezing, I haven't had coffee but have had calculus and the last thing I want to do is put on jeans and Crisco and pose awkwardly with a guy with gelled hair and a I-could-be-looking-sexily-resolute-or-I-could-just-be-pissed-off expression. I don't particularly want to see other people doing the aforementioned, but whatever, and I always enjoy the dichotomy of the down-jacketed Montrealers and the crisco-wearing Eva Mendez on a billboard outside the bike station. Witness an element of my morning:
However, when I was researching the topic (read: finding a photo of said ad online), I discovered
this article about the product being sold (jeans, not crisco). The premise of these jeans, apparently, is to add sexy curves to your presumably unsexy body. For women, this means a padded butt, which has been done before, but for men, apparently, it means a padded crotch in case one needs help in that department.
So, apparently, we now live in a society which feels the need to subtly enhance male junk size using designer jeans. Pretention and pretending and pose have always been a part of our world, but, seriously? To me this is both frightening and fairly funny.
No word yet on how all this relates to Crisco.
