Thursday, December 13, 2007

The java jacket, undressed

The deli across from my department, where everyone gets coffee, is part of what appears to be an ad campaign for Maidenform bras, and has been, on and off, all semester. What this means is that every cup of coffee people bring to class has wrapped around the cup, rather than the usual brown-paper hand-protecting slip, a photograph of the head and torso of a sultry woman with impressive cleavage, wearing only a flesh-colored push-up bra. So you sit in class, look around the room, and there are all these near-naked women. I can only imagine how distracting this is for those who find breasts interesting.

2 comments:

Withywindle said...

Perhaps you should bring this fine cup to class.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

1) Glad I didn't open this at my office (not that my office-mates would have found it scandalous, now that I think of it).

2) While I've argued before and will argue again that women are no less interested in sex than men are, women are far less interested in... what's in some of those photos than men are, and that includes straight men. Nor do straight women agree as easily as their male counterparts about what counts as hot. To distract women, the cups would have to bear images of especially nice shoes, puppies, or (for some women, allegedly) babies.