Cute, huh? And by “cute,” I mean, “not at all cute.” Though, I’ll be honest: when the ad first began, and the hot chick in the pool took up the majority of the screen, I thought, “Hey. This actually isn’t that bad. It’s Phoebe Cates circa Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She’s a cute girl with a regular face, not-at-all supermodelish, and they haven’t even showed her tits. I guess this isn’t so horrible, right?” But then I was whacked over the head with the Erect Penis of Sexually-Based Men’s Advertising, and not only was I “assaulted” (I use that term lightly; the actress in the commercial was actually quite cute and had a lovely, healthy-looking body) with a full-frontal of the girl erotically climbing out of the pool, it was taken even further: she began to take her top off. That’s where I kind of lost interest in the ad, and chalked it up to a bunch of slackers sitting around a board table, picking out the most cliche things they could find to appeal to men: hot girl, pool, wetness, red bikini, near-miss nudity, just because they were too worried about whether or not the chick delivering Pizza Hut that day would be as hot as the one who’d delivered from Papa John’s the prior week.
I guess we shouldn’t be so surprised, however – JC Penney has long been touted the man’s plaything store (oh, wait, no – that’s Sears), and KMart, the lower end of the lower end department stores, has always catered to women and their Martha Stewart-loving ways, you know? But JC Penney? Nah. Nope. I’ve got no excuse other than they were sick of being overlooked and decided to cater to the man’s side of the house rather than split the difference and call it a day. On the whole, however, I suppose I’m not all that surprised: the “too pretty for homework” shirt, once featured here on Zelda Lily, came from Penney’s. That explains a whole lot, now that I think about it.
