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Red Shoe Metro Diary
The Toronto Star. July 18, 2007. Joe Fiorito column:
The other day I noticed a Red Rocket, defaced from stem to stern with a depiction of a bottle of vodka and the comely legs of a party girl whose dress was hiked up around her thighs.
Let me count the ways this is wrong. But first, my bona fides.
I grew up during the sexual revolution. I also learned a variety of useful lessons about the objectification of women, with the help of some charming feminists.
The use of flesh to sell booze is pimping….So why is the people’s car decorated with the spread legs of a party girl and a bottle of booze? What might the lesson be? How about this: You can get a girl to part her thighs with a few drinks.
That is more or less what Mr. Giambrone and the TTC are telling the young girl who boards that streetcar on her way to school. It is what they shove in the faces of all the women who work in the glass-and-steel towers downtown. And it is the message they send to the working mothers and fathers of daughters.
Of course, the leggy ad here isn’t for vodka but rather “laser hair removal.” Charming.
Photo of the not-quite-legal (but hopefully soon-to-be-gone [PDF]) billboard at 4155 Yonge Street, just north of York Mills, taken by Jonathan Goldsbie.