today was my first day back on the job after training for a bath & body shop owned by the parent company which owns the lingerie company i have been fielding calls and emails for. not a single contact for the bath & body company, which isn’t too surprising, since the official website re-launch e-commerce site wasn’t until 6am EST today. however…
i’ve been hearing about this. there are a few lingerie stores that have been remodeled. they feature more-risqué products and provocatively-posed mannequins.
some people don’t like that. i got many, many emails from whiny old conservative women who told me so. in fact, i learned today that “mainstream America” doesn’t like these images, which “[promote] homosexuality,” chiefly because homosexuality is not mainstream and therefore must be bad. “mainstream America,” she explained, does not like “homosexuality.”
big deal, i say.
i did get one email commending us (from a guy, who said he used to work in marketing). good.
what’s wrong with mannequins humping one another in store windows in suburban malls? it’s marketplace art. it’s vaguely subversive. it’s pseudo-erotic. it’s mannequins, for chrissakes.
but on to the homo stuff. here, i must rant:
why is it okay for straight people to gaze at each other, but not gay people? why is it so bad for children to know that gay people exist? does it somehow make more sense to keep telling kids that there’s a Santa Claus but not a gender blur? is it not queer enough to shield your children from the mere fact of the existence of actual evil, and queerer still to shield them from, my god, love?!? but, though not even being remotely evil (per se, en masse), gays are supposed to hide in the darkness like vampires, monsters; never to come out in the daytime, lest they be –gasp, shock!– seen?!
what the fuck is America coming to?
but beyond that, even… why hide sexuality at all? it’s where we come from, for the love of god. you would not be reading this if not for sexuality. you would not have been born, and neither would anything else.
sometimes i feel like the only black guy at the indie rock show (to quote a great song by seanp).
5 replies on “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”
Um, how is it that mannequins are suggestive of any type of sexuality? *eyebrows* This, this I have got to hear!
supposedly because they’re posed suggestively. it’s all bullshit. something more for the Religious Right to harp on and on about. ridiculous. and with all the ACTUAL problems in the world.
i was looking through old posts and saw this one and decided i had to comment. anyways,my ex is a huge homophobe and doesn’t like the fact that i let our son hang out with my neighbors who are gay. he thinks ” the ass pirates that i hang out with will end up corrupting and/or molesting casey (our son)” I told him that “straight” people are just as likely to be child molestors as are gay people. I’ve talked to friends about this and suprisingly I’ve been told they think gay people are more likely to molest children. Maybe you should ask the lady what exactly is mainstream anymore. ok ill shut up now. kelli
sigh… most people (especially us poor, pathetic, dismally under-educated Americans) are morons. you sound like you have a FAR more realistic (and healthy) outlook on this. if more people actually hung out with gay people, there would be less homophobia. they’d see that they’re just people, no more and no less. i used to be a homophobe. then it occurred to me that i was only reacting against my own nature. i was just fighting my own sexuality. i think more people than would like to admit are a little bit bisexual, or at least curious. we’re not black/white, we fall somewhere on a spectrum. and that, i think, is all that “preference” really means. ok it’s my turn to shut up :) ~jeremy
What worries me is that kids are still being taught being gay is wrong. People can’t grasp the idea that we are just like every other animal out there. I haven’t ever heard of a group of animals casting one of them out because thery’re gay. Humans aren’t as smart as we like to think we are.