The Best Ass In The World
by Davis Fleetwood 
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Even a godless commie like me is not against everything. I’m actually looking forward to the Olympics, for instance. And on this next issue, I remain, momentarily, on the fence. So I’ll put this question to the women: If you bend over, take a picture of your own ass and upload it to the Internet to a website selling underwear, are you participating in your own exploitation? Asserting your post feminist sexually liberated self? Drunk?
American Apparel has launched a controversial new ad campaign that seeks to identify the best ass in the world. Insert any number of ass puns that cleverly reveal your feelings on this matter here.
An invitation on the American Apparel website reads:
Confident about the junk in your trunk? We’re looking for a brand new bum (the best in the world!) to be the new “face” for our always expanding intimates and briefs lines. Send in a close-up photo of your backside wearing American Apparel panties, bodysuits or briefs for consideration between January 28, 2010, and February 21, 2010.
There would have been a time in my life, when I was in my early twenties, where this sort of thing would have driven me to the streets in protest. In fact, in the early 1990’s, when Randall Terry and his terrorist organization Operation Rescue went on their assault of health clinics that provided birth control and abortions I participated in dozens of clinic defenses. When the 1992 Casey Supreme Court Decision chipped away at the legal precedent of Row V Wade, I joined with Act UP and other groups in shutting down the Holland tunnel. A civil disobedient, I got arrested and went to jail.
In other words, I was then and remain now that particular breed of male who prefers sexual intercourse with women and yet has repeatedly been called a faggot by many of the Neanderthals with whom I share a sexual orientation.
Yet now, at the age of forty, I am having a hard time getting offended by this American Apparel Campaign. I enjoy looking at those asses.
That is not so say that I don’t enjoy and support the clever counter attack, launched by the Anti-Porn Activist Network, wherein women write slogans on their skivvies and upload them to the American Apparel website. Among my favorite slogans written on the anonymous Asses of angry women include “fuck you, you misogynist asshole”, “American Apparel Stinks”, and “American Apparel isn’t worth my shit stains.”
To a thinking man like me, a women who puts a little bit of her brain in a clever slogan on her ass and uploads that picture to the web and her who uses her ass to protest, well, I enjoy looking at those asses as well. Are these women then exploited? I’m sure they would say no, and cite as the reason that they have defined the terms of their exposure for themselves.
Fair enough. But isn’t this a case of free speech for me and not for thee?
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