Drop Your Sox

I'm generally in favor of innuendo in advertising, except when it's creepy. In New York I saw a sign advertising trips to Brazil with the slogan: "Brazil: It's different down there."

I have mixed feelings about penis size innuendo though. More precisely, I hate it when companies imply that bigger is better. I think the movie Godzilla used the advertising slogan "Size does matter," or something along those lines, and I never saw the movie. I just don't agree with the message.

On the other hand, I like it when I'm told that size doesn't matter. Last night at the Sox game (Sox won 9-3), a sign above the urinal informed me that bigger isn't better. I think it was advertising car parts, which I don't buy a lot of, but I still give the company credit for speaking truth to power.

I'm not sure why it works so well. Maybe it's because I hope that enough repetition will make it true. If I were a woman, I'm not sure how I would react to the Dove True Beauty campaign. On the one hand, I agree that true beauty comes from inside or whatever. On the other hand, most women don't seem to want to be truly beautiful, they want to be hot. There's something of a selection problem: the women most likely to buy into the campaign emotionally might be the least likely to be hot. Knowing this, women won't buy Dove products. "Oh, that campaign is so great. Not for me, though; I'm too hot to need true beauty."

The same rationale ought to apply to penis size. I should wear a Godzilla watch and drive a Hummer or something, occasionally peppering conversation with commentary along the lines of, "This auto parts company doesn't think size matters? How quaint."