June 10, 2008
Advert Mad Libs
I try to reinvent what’s broken.
When the Sports Chalet ad comes in the mail, rather than lump it into the recycle bin (a used Trader Joe’s bag), sometimes Sean and I play visual mad libs. (Is that a good description?) We take our sharpies and “photo pens” and write and draw on/about the models. Even this simple task becomes a lesson. Sean sighs, lays his pen down, and looks at me with a wry smile. “I keep thinking of nasty man stuff”. We giggle and I confess mine with the same sad smile: “I tend to think catty…” We are our genders, still.
Even short tasks become lengthy for us because we want to make it count. Rather than lay on the sex and jealousy jokes, we think harder. I draw curly hairs protruding from the appalling low-cut bikinis and give the young women tattoos on their stomachs that say “keepin’ it real”. But then I make the girl next to her a plastic-lady who thinks “stoopid hippie” and has a few exaggeratedly large body parts. Sean makes one of the bikini girls hold a huge blade in her awkward hand, then makes a surfer guy hold his huge illustrated wiener. OK so swirly fart doodles and jokes about fucking always make it into our Sports Chalet desecrations. It feels appropriate as long as it’s not the only thing that comes to mind.
I have memories of doing this with my sister when we were maybe 10-12. This short-lived discount store called Treasure Hunt had the best/most jacked up ads. Everything about them was hilarious; models, poses, outfits. It was a joke sundae sprinkled with snickers. One time I even initiated writing a letter to Treasure Hunt, I think with the intent of just mocking them. Yah, I was a pretty cool kid. We cut out pictures and wrote what I thought to be scathing commentaries next to them. Something along the lines of “Oh my God, NICE OUTFIT loser! Did you find that in the dumpster behind an old folks home? LOLOLOL!” (Except minus the LOLs because LOLing hadn’t been discovered in the early 90’s. All we had was “ahahahah”.) And I don’t recall actually sending the letter, just writing it. But damn did I have a great time. I still love putting words into the mouths of photos, imagining what’s going on just out of the shot, and guessing at the goals of stylists and photographers everywhere.
With Sports Chalet though, and with ads in general now, it’s more like a gender commentary. The men are decidedly “unattractive” and considerably older while the girls are barely legal stick figures. The boys surf, the girls hold surfboards. The boys can lean and look casual with their “friends” while the girls can only pose next to one another, oblivious of their surroundings and frozen in time while we soak up them young bods.
Oh ladies, I want to huge each of you and remind you that you’re so much more. (We all are.) That your looks and your ability to sexually arouse males and make other women feel inferior are a tiny fraction of who you actually are. The simile jumped out at me today: making sexuality your focus it like being a disembodied appendage. A floating hand where a whole body is needed to mean anything or be useful or fulfilling in anyway. I mean the hand is needed yah, but without being connected to the rest of the body, what good is it? Sexuality without personality or intimacy or intellect or soul… Again with the similes… It’s like the cloying sugar syrup that goes into a slushie. It’s only yummy with all that other stuff included in the package.
This journal is a constant source of amazement and learning for me. I could not be happier.