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Joe Muto
Muto Time
This summer I worked in a jewelry store. Situated in downtown Cincinnati, the store was an upscale establishment specializing in Rolex watches. However, nobody told this to the customers, as our clientele seemed to consist mostly of guys named Ray-Ray who came in with their girlfriends looking for replacement gold teeth.
I was hired because the owner, when he wasn't glued to a security monitor with his finger resting on the "911" speed-dial button, also ran an online store. My job was to take merchandise, photograph it and put it on the Internet. Not exactly brain surgery. Actually, only a notch or two above trash collection.
But it paid the bills, kept me out of the sun and I didn't have to come in until 11 a.m. Plus the girls who sold the jewelry were hot. Not that they'd talk to the creepy, pale computer guy who worked upstairs, but I'd take what I could get.
So, exiled to my upstairs computer room and scared to associate with the Rolex Bunnies downstairs, I used my lunch break to engage in political discourse on the Internet. And it just so happened that one of the best sites on the Internet for highbrow political discourse was playboy.com.
I should add a disclaimer here for all future and past employers stating that I do not habitually view nude women in my spare time at work. I typed "Playboy" into the browser on a whim, hoping for the indication of an impending Olsen twins appearance in the magazine. Finding nothing about Mary-Kate, nor Ashley, I was about to close the window when something caught my eye: large fake breasts.
Actually, it was an ad at the top of the page. It said "Become a Playboy Campus Representative!" Underneath the text, a grinning Aryan frat-boy type had his arms around two gorgeous blondes wearing tiny cut-off black tees with the bunny logo. And underneath the tees? You guessed it: large fake breasts.
I'm going to digress here and talk about a subject that's close to the hearts of men and directly in front of the hearts of women. I'm one of the roughly five or six men in the world who don't like fake breasts. Sure, they fill a blouse quite aptly. They allow women to defy gravity well into their 80s.
I'll admit that every time I talk to my friend here on campus who continues to deny her highly obvious reception of a breast enlargement last year, I can't stop my mouth from watering a little. But fake breasts are bad, because as any connoisseur of fine video pornography will tell you, they just don't move right. Porn breasts usually remind me of two sweaty, skin-covered tetherballs trying to escape the hot set lights.
Despite my disapproval of silicon enhancement, I found the prospect of being Notre Dame's representative for Playboy Magazine very attractive. So, my head filled with visions of invitations to the Mansion, I tackled the representative application. It was remarkably wordy and full of surreal juxtapositions. One question demanded an essay on freedom of speech, while the next page queried, "How would you describe the way you dress?" I ended up doing the lengthy application at home. It took me 45 minutes. I could already taste the champagne that I'd be licking off bare Playmates.
My initiation packet came last week. I am now the Official Playboy Magazine Representative to Notre Dame. I'm thinking of getting business cards made up.
So what are my duties as a campus representative? Well, the first thing they sent me was a packet of promotional flyers I'm supposed to hand out. The grand prize in the contest they advertise is a rock climbing, kayaking and mountain biking trip with two members of the "Playboy Playmate X-Treme Team."
I received the flyers and immediately had a little mental debate with myself. I couldn't decide what was more pathetic — me handing these out by the entrance to DeBartolo Hall or parents proudly telling their friends that they have a daughter on the Playmate X-Treme Team. I entered the contest five times.
The agreement that I signed specifically told me that it's not my job to find models. Someone got the crazy notion that propositioning women to pose constitutes sexual harassment. I am, however, allowed to accept pictures. So, anyone with a tasteful nude selection of pictures can give them to me. Theoretically, I will pass them on to Playboy Magazine.
So, my main goal at this point is to parlay my rep-hood into a job with Playboy. I'm a writer, and I hear that Playboy has articles, although oddly enough I've never noticed them.
Joe Muto is a junior FTT and English double major who will be the emcee at the pep rally on Friday. He invites any women with large fake breasts who disagree with him to argue about it over dinner. His column appears every other Wednesday. Contact him at jmuto@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Wednesday, October 9, 2002
