SuppliedAdvertisers love creating beauty standards that can’t possibly be attained. “Maybe she’s born with it” means: “she’s not and neither are you.” “Maybe it’s Maybelline” means: “definitely — and four hours of photo editing.”
We’re not all six-foot-tall statuesque incarnations of Helen of Troy. Some of us have linebacker shoulders. Some of us have never quite perfected the Victoria’s Secret model beach waves. Some of us forget to shower occasionally. It happens. Don’t throw us out with your sandwich crusts and half-eaten brown apples. What makes you think we’re less than delicious?
If linebacker shoulders are the sandwich crusts of the world, and the uneven kinks in my hair are the half-eaten brown apples, then maybe we’ve pushed expectations of beauty beyond magazine covers. It’s possible we’ve projected our desire for perfection into grocery aisles and Safeway flyers. Are apples that brown naturally no longer food? Do they no longer satisfy our healthy cravings? Or are they victims in an advertising blitzkrieg designed to render the “average” apples obsolete, and so perpetuate the “pretty genes?”
Even though 69 per cent of Canadians are perfectly happy with their apple selection, these foxy little Arctic-brand bitches will probably roll out into grocery stores in 2017. How do you think the other apples will react when no one wants them anymore because, apparently, natural is old news? How will the freckled Ambrosias and misshapen Galas take to the usurping tramp Arctic? I’ll tell you how: they will fucking riot. Produce aisles will flow with Arctic applesauce — still white, and forever fresh, reeking with the sweet scent of retribution.
Don’t tell me how I like my apples. I like them just the way their mamas made them.
