My wife’s a big believer in Victoria’s Secret. And apparently, by the volume of catalogs we receive on a weekly basis, Victoria’s Secret is a big believer in her. They arrive faster than we can throw them away and now have semi-permanent residence in our room, magazine stand, bathrooms, and living room. They’ve become our little guy’s bedtime stories. Why read “Where the Wild Things Are” when you can simply see. That’s my motto, anyway.
While 30-40 Victoria’s Secret catalogs a week will never have me complaining, I’m always a little “flabbergasted!” as to why so many women aspire to look like the contorted, well lit, hyper-Photoshopped MODELS hip-cocked and splayed across its pages– as if Pouty VonScrewmestein regularly walks out of the house with perma-cleave and liquefy filtered hips/legs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m like any other dude who gives out free high fives for posed skin and female sultrification, but I also enjoy perusing a VS catalog for the sole intent of assuaging my wife’s inferiority complex.
Maybe it’s because I’ve got a pretty hefty background in Photoshop, but when my wife consistently says, “I want to look like her” or “I wish I looked like that”, I always scoff and say first, in all honesty, “You DO look like that” and “They don’t look like that” whereupon, I’ll break out the magnifying glass and direct her to the finer points of cleavage, hip, skin and color/light manipulation.
I’m puss enough to admit I don’t understand a lot of things— and this complex is unequivocally one of them: See, my lady-friend is neither ass-faced or flabby. Polar opposite, even. Yet she looks at the catalogs and thinks she comes up short to what’s manipulated on their pages when, in fact, she’s pretty comparative to the enshrined wearers of Victoria’s knickers. Regardless, it’s “I want to look like that.”
Look, I don’t mention my lady-friend in any attempt at the hollow braggadocio of the guy who served Hotty McSmokinpants at a café once and now they’re like THIS. I kind of lucked into my lady-friend’s hotness myself thanks to charm and a gym membership. But mostly my charm, I like to think. Still, no thanks to me, she’s always getting stares and special treatment from the dude folk on account of sparkling personality and good, old-fashioned, home brewed hawtness. Dude folk I like to simply call, “Assholes”.
As an example, we were recently at the airport* when a pack of assholes walked by. It was obvious they hadn’t been regularly privileged to regularly getting their asses kicked as their eyes were generously manhandling my lady-friend’s lady lumps. One cad even calls out, “Daaaaaamn!” as she walks by. Used to this kind of thing, my wife keeps walking, but I, being the rabble-rouser I am, turn, jump the rail and introduce all their punk faces to my knuckle sandwich in a civilian reenactment of Guile’s level in Street Fighter 2. And by all that I mean I totally pussed out and just kind of turned and grinned at the guy like a douchebag. Which, in hindsight, was the right thing to do, because as much as I compliment her, it’s the compliments of those who don’t know you that seem to matter. That, and those guys would have probably beat me the f*** down.
Again, I wholly digressed there to make a vague point— I don’t understand why women who look like they could suit up in the frilly underthings of Vicki’s Underpants Conspiracy feel they still have to live up to a few sets of blatantly manipulated racks. With all this hyperobjectification of women (yay!) as S-curved, lusty, toned and unblemished uber-babes manufactured to keep erectile dysfunction at bay, I’d volunteer that dudes share some small role in reining that expectation to a reality where females can find comfort in their own skin. While it’s probably entirely hypocritical, I’m not condemning photo manipulation in the slightest —it makes for some truly wonderful sights to behold. On the other hand, so does CGI work in film, but that doesn’t make it real- that just makes it Crematoria.
And that’s what I wish more people would realize.
* Escaping cold weather. I can handle cold extremities for a few months, but by mid-January, I’m Global Warming’s biggest cheerleader. Inconvenient Truth? Nothing could be MORE convenient. Beachfront property, warm weather– I don’t get what all the hubbub’s about.