The Post-Ironic Swimsuit Special

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The February 2006 issue of Out Magazine seeks perfection in the malformed and gravitas in the patently silly.  Although the editors playfully dubbed it the “Swimsuit Special,” they could just as accurately have described it as a transformative hermeneutics applied to the nature of contradiction.

A Diesel ad (the brand that brings you “Successful Living”) pictures the apotheosis of our militarist culture, when the earth and everything on it is camouflaged for War.  At this key moment in our history—now, one assumes—we can most effectively counter the ravages of the military-industrial-academic complex by purchasing knit shirts and distressed jeans.  Missiles are peacekeepers.  Arbeit macht frei.

An ad from Abreva asserts that “Nobody looks HOT in a cold sore.”  But the model who appears in the ad would be attractive even if half his body were covered with lesions, leading one to conclude that the ad is a kind of koan whose meaning is inaccessible to rational understanding, a post-postmodern deconstruction of the HOT/not-HOT binary that moves the reader to abandon whatever good judgment is left to him.  Not likely?  You’re reading this screed, aren’t you?

Finally, in an article on his new line of Hot Nude Yoga DVDs, Aaron Star declares that “[g]ay men—or men in general—need to celebrate the erect penis.  It is a point of power for one’s masculinity.”  Star’s neo-phallogocentric statement once again privileges the male signified even though, as Aristophanes made clear over 24 centuries ago, the phallus is a silly structure, made even sillier when it’s dressed up with hats and small sweaters.

Comments

[Phil the Sore]

Thank you for frank talk about cold sores and other STDs. Cold sores are caused by the herpes simplex virus and they're contagious. Although not a focus of our Healthy Penis 2006 campaign, awareness of all sexually transmitted diseases is important.

Don't knock Hot Nude Yoga til you've tried it.

[Rachel Tension]

Fuck, Enrique, now we have to start swabbing down our keyboards after leaving comments on your Herpes-infected posts.

[ahfukit]

"Ordinarily I wouldn't mind, but..."
"But what?"
"Well, I just got back from swimming in the pool. And the water was cold..."
"Oh, you mean... Shrinkage."
"Yes. Significant shrinkage."
"So you feel you were shortchanged."
"Yes. I mean, if she thinks that's me, she's under a complete misapprehension. That was not me, Jerry. That was not me."

-- George and Jerry, in The Hamptons

"Do women know about shrinkage?"
"What do you mean, like laundry?"
"No..."
"Like when a man goes swimming... Afterwards..."
"It shrinks?"
"Like a frightened turtle."
"Why does it shrink?"
"It just does."
"I don't know how you guys walk around with those things."

-- George, Elaine and Jerry, in The Hamptons

"It's like my brain is facing my penis in a chess game."

-- Jerry, in The Nose Job **

[Enrique the Gay Philosopher]

At least George didn't try talking to it, coaxing it to enlarge.

On the other hand, since many men are on a first-name basis with their ankle-spankers, why shouldn't they try to talk things through?

[ahfukit]

At least George didn't try talking to it, coaxing it to enlarge.

"Snake charming"? Tried it, doesn't work.

I wonder if Jerry, Larry, and crew played with the petseleh stereotype -- or rejected it out of hand. (Jews on average are 25% shorter than the general population. Not that there's anything wrong with that.)