On Friday, the WSJ profiled Christopher & Banks, a company that targets 40-something white moms by using a "model" named Mary - who looks strangely an awful lot like Meredith Vieira. The article quotes: "Currently, Mary could work as a teacher, a nurse, or a bank teller. She drives a minivan. Her husband drives a Jeep. She prefers sit-down restaurants such a T.G.I.Friday's to McDonald's. She reads People and Good Housekeeping but shuns Vogue."
So, basically - let's break down ol' Mary for a second - Mary is not a surgeon, an engineer, an artist, or an astronaut - nope, Mary sticks with the old standby "women" jobs. Mary drives a clunky ass minivan because her main goal in life is to cater, cater, cater to her children while her husband runs off with his more exciting, less inhibited (woman or man) boss from the office in his brand new Jeep. They will climb mountains, repel off them, and have wild passionate sex in the bushes - things that Mary would never conceive of doing because she's lost her passion for life, while feeding the children spit-up peas and shopping for sweaters adorned with Noah's Ark (you think I'm kidding - but the article specifically states that C&B has had great success with the Noah's Ark sweater). Mary doesn't know about homosexuality - she thought "Fried Green Tomatoes" was too racy and secretly reads romance novels to fuel a nonexistant fire in her belly. Mary had a glimmer of action in the 70's when she reconsidered feminism and all the benefits of the civil rights movement - but she brushed it off as an adolescent idealistic phase.
Fuck Mary! She's ruining the individuality of women of this country! There's an actual paragraph that reads: "Many current styles play off past hits. For example, sweaters made up of different-colored squares have been hot [pff]. So has anything with a cat motif [PFFFF]. This season, the company created a combination of the two: a white shirt embroidered with cats, whose midsections feature colorful squares." Oh my God & Jesus as well! This is terrible! Just terrible! And people wonder why Europeans are so much more stylish than Americans - conservative, boring mid-western Americans!
Other articles - take, for example, the one entitled "Single Mothers of Sons Are More Likely to Wed Than Moms of Girls." Ok, you're thinking - semi-offensive - let's see what the article is about! Whoopeeee! Highlights: "For men, it seems sons increase the value of a marriage and how much they'll invest in it" - because obviously we all live in a monarchial state in which everything is passed down father to son - Jesus! How could I have forgotten that!?! Also - "Fathers of sons spend more money on their families than do fathers of daughters. After their child's birth, they also work an extra 40 hours per year compared with fathers of daughters (the extra time comes from leisure, not family). They also spend more on housing." Who are these worthless fathers? Who are these stinking, rotten, worthless fathers that feel devoid of masculinity if their sperm did not designate further male-ness? WHO ARE THEY? Jeez - wanna know why women hate men (ahhh shades of Lauryn Hill) - maybe because women didn't have a good male role model growing up. MAYBE THAT'S IT.
In the last related story of the Wall Street Journal severely letting me down - "Last Call for Camel, Marlboro Ads in Bars" - we learn that Freedom tobacco has extraordinarily good-looking marketing reps. called "leaners" who try to bum cigarettes off men in bars, and then get them to smoke the Freedom brand instead. This happens in Miami and New York so far, as there is no smoking in bars and restaurants, and the men who are targeted have no idea that the women are marketers. Now if that ain't low-down, I don't know what is. I guess they've always sold sex in the form of a cigarette - but who knew it could be so tangible?
AND FINALLY - in Nationwide news: What the hell is happening to this piss-poor country!?! (Oh - and the subject, as always, has nothing to do with this entry.)