When I was an adolescent struggling with hormones and holiness, a body spray was heavily marketed to my demographic. “SPRAY MORE, GET MORE,” one tagline promised. The campaign wasn’t subtle. The executive behind it described it thusly: “It has this amazing effect that once you spray it on, any woman would fall for you.” The product’s fragrance, according to its website, “acts upon the female libido and stimulates the clothing-removal section of the female brain.” One early commercial presented an attractive blonde so overwhelmed by the scent on a male mannequin, she proceeded to essentially dry hump it. A print ad juxtaposed a can of spray and a pair of panties around a woman’s ankles. Other ads were similarly provocative.
Then there was the commercial with the Mormon missionary who makes the hot, horny women in the neighborhood receptive to his solicitations. It’s unclear whether he proceeds to convert them or fuck them. (The shot of the hottie in a tight tank top holding a garden hose that suddenly spurts suggests the latter.)
The sexless academics in women’s studies departments predictably condemned the campaign as sexist, but those commercials certainly reached their target audience. The premise is ridiculous, of course, but the thought that by spraying some heavily-scented deodorant on my gangly teen body I could make myself attractive to girls (who were both a mystery and an obsession) was compelling. The tension came from the fantasy of transforming the pure, virginal girls at my Christian school into “lust-crazed vixens.” (The “sluts” at the public high school were presumably easier to entice.)
Lutheran Guilt 