Tallulah Lines must be prohibited from “writing” any more knee jerk “I’m so angry I just saw a booby” articles...

Tallulah Lines must be prohibited from “writing” any more knee jerk “I’m so angry I just saw a booby” articles (Student, Week 5, “Students in Sex Binge Horror”). Her contention that advertising “reduces them [humans] to sexual entities” presupposes that we aren’t. Perhaps she should extricate her head from her bloomers and examine the homophonically related counterpart to her “sex sells,” namely sex cells. The biological goal of all life is to procreate or reproduce, and if that doesn’t reduce us to sexual entities, then how does the outline of a female curve on a 4x6” bit of cardboard make any difference?

Further marring the article is a poor to nonexistent understanding of the term “logical,” which Ms. Lines uses twice. Sex, she posits, “has no logical place” promoting bars. This is true in the most misleading of senses, as the only way something logically does not fit is when a logical contradiction holds to be the truth, for example when asked to draw a square circle. There is nothing logically contradictory to a human jumping to the moon; however, there are certainly physical impossibilities. Later she pens the equally “true” phrase “there is often no logic behind it [sex in advertising]”. Once again I fail to sense what logical contradictions are here involved. What ostensibly Tallulah means is that it makes no sense to her in particular, not that any higher vindicating power, in this case logic, dictates her conclusion from some golden set of premises she neglected to mention to the reader. This false ethos, coupled with petty, superfluous anecdotes, does not do justice to a legitimate field of psycho-sociological inquiry, and that alone is worthy of censure.

Yet, I digress, for can not a soul amongst the readership of Student think of one reason, not a logical one, but perhaps a fiscal, or even a physical motivation, for sex in advertisements? Once again we meet the dichotomy between the misleading “sex sells” and the explanatory sex cells. Bars are essentially locations for people to relax, drink, and find people to have sex with, and most people are aware of that whether they are teetotal, or chaste, or even don’t like relaxing. It isn’t, as her straw man arguments propose, that one thinks they will meet the girls on the flyer, or even choose to drink at such an establishment due to these same girls, the advertising is for bars everywhere, for every awkward individual who needs a few pints before gathering the courage to have their sexual advances sunk by another denizen of the bar. These complex mating rituals may not be confined only to bars, nor should they be, but the fact remains, bars are often ground zero for sexual intimacy, and any unsubtle hints that remind us to try them out once in a while make perfect financial sense. I would also like to personally thank Tallulah for deciding on behalf of the people of Earth what is “overly sexualized” or offensive. This “offensive” advertising is the crap that leaks out when society crushes sex like a ripe tomato in its palm. Personal revulsion is converted to prescriptive rules, or divine mandate. While Tallulah crusades against “the old but unrelenting idea” that men and women are treated unequally, she is merely reasserting the older, less subtle, less relenting idea that sex is wrong, and taboo, and should be hidden, rather than enjoyed openly and healthily, as nature intended. Just leave the fucking tomato alone.

Clearly advertising uses men and women differently, although even these once stark lines show heavy signs of erosion; but to point the finger at the medium rather than the underlying causes, i.e. sexual repression in society, is to err in the most foolish way available. Tallulah is a blind woman grasping an elephant for identification, and I’m pretty certain I know which bit she latched on to.

-William Greczyn