Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Archive for the ‘Women’ Category

I’m pretty sure everyone has seen that commercial where a couple of white girls are complaining to an unsuspecting black girl about how much work it is to take their birth control pill everyday.

Unlike most people, who tune out during commercials, I generally pay pretty close attention to them. That’s because some of the most fucked up hilarious things about our society are embedded right in our advertising. I do my best to decode them.

I know what you’re thinking: how can you diagnose anything from just another dumb-ass, misleading pharmaceutical commercial? Because, remarkably, this particular dumb-ass pharmaceutical commercial manages to accurately depict several social ills, in a matter of seconds.

Three Actual Problems Depicted in the NuvaRing Commercial

1. Abundance of Brain-Dead Chicks: In the first few seconds of the commercial, the short-haired, Minnie Driver-looking girl is mindlessly humming along to the television (to the tune of another Nuvaring commercial). After that, she manages to remain puzzled throughout. Regrettably, she’s of the now-abundant type that can, and often does, conduct entire conversations–even in-person ones–in emoticons and cutesy internet abbreviations. It’s no coincidence that’s she’s holding her QWERTY cell phone open the whole time. But, of the three, she’s the most harmless.

2. Manipulative, Bitchy Know-It-Alls: The longer-hair ringleader is the type of girl that you (as a man or woman) want to stay away from at all costs. First of all, she’s stupid enough to buy into cheap commercial gimmicks. But despite this, she still thinks she’s smarter than the rest of the group–as evidenced by her rolling eyes and condescending tone with the black chick. Worst of all, this bitch isn’t content with drinking the Kool-Aid herself.  You have to take a few sips too.

3. Lazy, Instant-Gratification Seekers: You have to hand it to the assholes at the pharmaceutical company for astutely recognizing that people are getting so dumb and lazy that they’d prefer to cram something into their body cavity—and hold it there for several weeks—over taking a tiny pill everyday. All three women are guilty of this, though the black girl is naïve enough to let bitchy-know-it-all seduce her into trying it.

In the end, it’s a good thing they’re all wearing NuvaRings. We don’t want these idiots reproducing.

I’m not a big sci-fi fan, but there’s a famous episode of the original Star Trek series from the 60s called “The Man Trap” that speaks to me. In it, the members of the crew land on a desolate planet and encounter a beautiful woman living there alone. Strangely, she looks different to each of the male characters. To Captain Kirk, the creature’s a young blond girl. To another guy: an older, sophisticated brunette. But in reality, the beautiful woman is nothing more than a “Salt Vampire,” a shape-changing creature that tricks men so it can extract the salt out of their bodies–its principal source of nourishment.

How do I look?

At some point or another, everybody has known a Salt Monster–a girl who, despite not outwardly displaying a single one of the traditional indicators of beauty, still got treated as if she was a hot ticket. Overweight, uninteresting, no charm, bad skin, mangled teeth, unfunny, manly back, grating voice, no ass, no tits, generally stupid, annoying laugh, bitchy attitude, manly haircut. Whatever. It didn’t matter. This girl got the attention of both genders, to the befuddlement of a lot of people like me, who were left to wonder if we were seeing the same thing as everybody else. And, to make things worse, all of that undeserved validation inevitably went to her head.

Recently, I’ve been starting to feel like one of the most important females in my life is a little like this: Josephine, my car.

About a dozen times over the past few weeks, I’ve gone out to my (skillfully) street-parked car to find a note on the windshield that looks like this:

Now, to be fair, Josephine doesn’t really deserve to be called a Salt Monster. For one, she’s a beautiful shade of mid-90s teal. She’s charming, well-built, and aging gracefully. Sure, she has some dings and rust, but that’s not surprising at her age (a teenager). She’s loyal and always comes through when I need her. She doesn’t complain, only whining when I turn her steering wheel a little too hard when her belts are cold.

But, all this attention seems a bit excessive for a lady like her. She’s not a classic. She’s not scarce. And she’s definitely not in exceptional condition. She’s blue-collar and functional.

So what’s with all of the unsolicited offers on my car? As an urban, ethnic guy I’m suspicious of all questions and compliments. Is this some sort of car scam I’ve never heard of, or does Josephine have a little Salt Monster in her?

Whatever the case–and for the record–my car is not for sale. The sign goes up tomorrow.