That time of the...life

So the crazy-sexy bloggers over at Jezebel got kinda pissy about this study, which shows that all women feel bad about their bodies after viewing advertisements featuring models. "Wake up!" they said to the women leading fashion magazines. "Doesn't this study prove that you're doing the wrong thing?"

Au contraire, femmes. The study proves that these ads are doing the right thing! Click over to this absurdly hot Guess ad. Will I ever look so glowy and skinny and full of hipbones wandering around in no shirt on a tropical island surrounded by glowy, skinny men with removable tattoos?
(That may have been a gratuitous number of links...) AH...no. Will I ever look this artfully disheveled and nakedly happy? Ah...probably not. Will I live out my dumpy, unadorned life far from the happiest place on Earth? AH...maybe.

But will I ever purchase a pair of Guess Jeans, which for the modest price of $170 will let me believe, in my own fantasy life, that I am not this but this? Really, nearly $200 is not that much to ask. It's almost nothing!

The point of these ads is to make people feel bad and, to compensate, purchase whatever the undernourished Estonian 15-year-old in the ad is schilling for at the moment. Do I feel bad? Sometimes. But that is the point. And, in the case of all those ads featuring people making out, I also feel, well...never mind.

Let's just say I might be taking my lunch break in the bathroom today. (Which kinds leads to my other, more important, question - does anyone else think Guess ads are a little like porn? I guess it makes sense, because of course sex sells, because it's the one thing we all want...ok. Really. Time for a break.)

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Oh, and, Maryland is great! I can honestly say that I had the best sex education of anyone I know, and that the teacher never shied away from awkward questions (Condoms? Great. Gay sex? No problem. "Can a woman get sick from swallowing too much semen..." Uh...yeah, thanks for that charming memory, 13-year-old boy in sex ed class.)