In the course of my career, I’ve had the honor of adding five words and phrases to the language of American slang. “Yippie!” of course has been a shout of joy, forever, it seems, but my contribution became the nickname for the Youth International Party, which protested against the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “Jill off” is the female equivalent of jack–off. It appeared in a fable I wrote in 1973, Tales of Tongue Fu, about a man with a 15-inch tongue who was very popular with the ladies. “The Twinkie Defense” was coined in 1979 while I was covering the trial of Dan White, a former cop who murdered San Francisco’s progressive Mayor George Moscone (who advocated the decriminalization of marijuana) and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the U.S. “Disinfotainment” is a term I began using in the late 1980s to describe disinformation in the guise of entertainment. “Softcore pornography” became a regular feature in my counter-cultural magazine, The Realist, during the early 1960s, as a corollary of the Supreme Court’s attempt to define hardcore pornography. The term was always accompanied by a photograph, usually of an un-retouched advertisement that deliberately relied on sexual titillation for its impact.
For example, a few years ago, an ad in the Sunday supplements presented a young girl holding a bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch and a carrot stick, which she obviously had dipped in the salad dressing. The copy read “When Ranch Tastes The Way It’s Supposed To, It Shows.” As if to prove that claim, there was a white globule on the ’tweener’s smiling lips, blatantly resembling what would be a kiddie porn version of an adult facial.
Recently, a digitalized photo of two very young girls posing above cartons of Breyers ice cream pops ccarrying the tag “Ice Cream For Pedophiles—or, Sometimes You Just Don’t Need Photoshop” made the rounds on the Internet. After posting it to HuffingtonPost.com, I read the text beneath the header “Lickable: Luscious, smooth, sweet and fun. These are just a few of the words we used to describe our new Vanilla Orange Sherbert Creamsicle. These words also apply equally to America’s 2005 Olympic Rhythmic Gymnastics Team and the beautiful young ladies who comprise it. In response, Breyers has created a flavour inspired by the sassy metallic orange leotards of our young feminine gymnasts who eagerly are busting their fresh asses to make every American proud. And of course, our RSG-themed Creamsicle is as fun to eat as the girls are a pleasure to watch—so come join in on the action. All proceeds from sales of the Vanilla Orange Sherbet Swirls line go to help sponsor our young ladies in competition against other rhythmic gymnasts from around the world.”
Well, I was wrong. You did need Photoshop.
Although I myself am a longtime professional prankster, I must confess that I was totally fooled by what I thought was a genuine Breyers advertisement. It was successfully counterfeited because, in the context of a culture based on commercial exploitation, it had balanced—if only temporarily—on the cusp of what’s possible and what’s probable. I immediately sent an email apologizing for perpetuating this hoax, but it had already been posted, and the resulting comments underscored my point. Samples include “Somewhere out there is a group of guys in suits who signed off on this. Who looked at this and said to themselves, ‘That looks great! That’s exactly the ad we want for our company!’ And there has to be a marketing guy shaking his head, saying, ‘But...I was kidding.’”
Others read “You realize that the ‘porn’ is in the viewers’ imagination, don’t you? There is nothing in that picture that would titillate anyone except a very few bent people. We all understand the significance of a crotch shot, so should we ban kids from Olympic games? And how about Miss America, that great Christian burlesque show? Or, more to the point, the mini-Miss America contests for 6- to 10-year-olds that red-staters love so much?” and “In a true democracy and free society, no one should feel afraid of information. This ad (phony for sure) is disturbing as it should be. But it can be a lesson for people to start noticing just how manipulating advertising has become as advertisers grow more desperate all the time to force people to see ads.” and, “Wow, I feel strangely compelled to run out and eat a gymnast! What effective advertising!”
And so I leave you now with a way to tell when a photo can be considered softcore porn. It gives you a soft-on.
