Shop Sears for Sexy:Craftsman, Kenmore & Nudity - Life well spent

by AdFool | August 6, 2010 at 03:36 pm

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Sears is sexy?

Pshaw. Sears is genetically incapable of being sexy. They’re too middle of the road, too reserved, too…nerdy. Heck, most of their stores I’ve been inside have the feel of an oversized thrift shop more than anything else. There’s nothing hip or trendy about them. So color me stunned when I read a headline accusing Sears of serving up the raunch to American families. Victoria’s Secret? Sure, I can see that. Calvin Klein? Absolutely, the man practically brags about doing it. But Sears? You couldn’t find a more staid storefront outside Amish country. Sears doesn’t have enough edge to cut butter.

Well, personal disbelief aside, the stark reality is that the American Family Association has launched a protest against Sears to get them to curb a seemingly newfound appetite for porn. According to an article featured on internet news site WorldNetDaily, the AFA is asking its members to send notes of complaint to Sears due to the provocative and pornographic images they make visible – and offer for sale - to any and all who visit their site. Are the girls cavorting with a Kenmore? Copulating with a Craftsman? This is insane. Say it ain’t so, Sears.

Full disclosure: I ‘m nearly forty which means I’ve had plenty of youthful experience with a Sears catalogue. The handy (stop it) in-home opportunity to ogle attractive women in their skivvies was something of a right of passage for generations of pre-adolescent boys. And in the pre-internet era, Sears soft-core was about all the average horn-dog could plausibly get – excepting of course those rare instances of discarded porn usually discovered in the basements of abandoned houses or in the bushes near empty lots. The kind of stuff available online today would’ve made even a young Hugh Hefner blush (not Larry Flynt though, that guy’s weird). The crude rawness that pervades most of it is frightening and more than a little nauseating. But what is Sears really up to? Are they watching their sales go the way of the dodo and making a conscious decision to sex it up a bit? Everyone knows the atypical Sears look when it comes to their models - cheesy grins and two-dimensional posing akin to Donny and Marie. Did they finally decide enough was enough and hire the deviant in charge of the (by now) somewhat legendary Abercrombie and Fitch sex fest to spice it up a bit? Not quite.

I went to the Sears US site – strictly research of course - and after a fair amount of pointed searching finally came across what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t the regular models or their posing that’s been smuttified - it was the poster section of the website. It would seem that Sears leans fairly heavily on some outfit known as Poster Revolution.com when it comes to supplying their website’s poster content, all while taking a cut of the profits from each and every sale. But is it pornography? Oh yeah. By modern standards it’s comparatively tame but it is still some pretty in-your-face nudity plus more. And it absolutely does not hide behind any sort of age verification window or similar. Also, now that I’ve done the heavy lifting and found the images they helpfully pop up on the front page each time I visit the site. No more hard work for me. Thanks Sears!

Look, if I had to guess the whole thing is probably more embarrassing for Sears than anything else. Knowing the work ethic of most high-level MBA’s these days I doubt they even knew they sold posters at all. It’s a long way from those metal framed poster racks atop a honeycomb of small boxes holding the correspondingly numbered posters. Remember the shock and awe you felt as a kid when you stood there flipping through the display of sports heroes and cartoon characters only to come across some near perfect version of womanhood (usually straddling a hot rod or lying on a beach somewhere)? It usually took three yells and at least one rap on the head from my mother to get me back into boys-wear trying on rugby pants.

To my memory, the Sears of old went to great lengths to de-sexualize the models they used to sell swimsuits and undergarments. They were selling clothes, not the images. Any sexiness was something of a by-product. In this case, whether Sears wants to cop to it or not, they are selling the image and when that image is porn (or even porn-lite) they’re gonna have to take their lumps when an outfit like the AFA comes a callin’.

It’s kind of sad to see Sears like this. I miss the comparative innocence the Sears catalogues of long ago represented. Wasn’t a little feminine mystery a good thing? These days I think we’ve all seen way, way too much.