Hair Dysphoria

wasn’t there a post here awhile back about a British chain like Tesco’s or Waitrose or something that had an entire newsletter (and division?) devoted to the rainbow fetish brigade?

You may be thinking of this:

Whether female customers, the backbone of John Lewis’ customer base, will be inspired to shop harder and more often by the thought of employees bringing their autogynephilia to work remains to be seen. Ditto bondage fantasies and wearing rubber dog costumes. Perhaps well-off ladies in search of posh frocks and upscale furnishings will be dazzled and enchanted by the thought of sad, cross-dressing men in thigh-high boots who like to share photos of themselves smeared with unspecified white substances.

Oh, there’s more.

I’m so old, I remember when certain degrees of kinks and fetishes were cause for losing one’s security clearance.

Well, you’d think that the hiring of so many psychologically marginal people – say, those demanding to be referred to as “it,” and using office time to enthuse about “gangbangs” and piss fetishes, and being titillated by the thought of elaborate surgical self-harm – might be considered suboptimal. 

But again, here we are.

Yes! That was it! How could I forget little Miss Leatherette with his riding crop. Still boggles my mind what any of all that has to do with the job at hand.

Quite. As I said in the post, 

I was in John Lewis recently, buying towels, and at no point did I feel a need to know about the cross-dressing bondage activities of the sales staff. Whether the person bagging my towels likes to dress up as a pantomime dame while brandishing instruments of torture was not, it has to be said, foremost in my mind.

And it’s worth noting that, despite the understandable bewilderment and disenchantment of customers – the general response being something like what the hell were you thinking? – the mighty minds behind the project chose not to acknowledge any misjudgement on their part. 

Yes! That was it! How could I forget little Miss Leatherette with his riding crop. Still boggles my mind what any of all that has to do with the job at hand.

What’s striking about these things – the obnoxious-child insurance ad, the cross-dressing fetishist as an example of “identities we share” – is just how wildly they depart from the values of the businesses’ customers, and indeed of the wider public. These are not minor errors or things that aren’t quite right. They’re weirdly incongruous. 

It’s the ‘sell more burgers’ meme brought to life. 

Back to business as usual.

The words lamppost and rope come to mind.

Also, treason.