Tamera Smith Allred is one busy little beaver. Uh, let me re-phrase that. Tamera Smith Allred got to The Oregonian's Steve Duin with lurid tales of slutty mannequins.
No boundaries in this sexually charged culture
At one comfy, cluttered end of Westfield Shoppingtown in Vancouver, Santa's red velvet chair sits approximately 60 feet from the sex-starved mannequin in the red push-up bra at Victoria's Secret.
How does Duin know that the mannequins are sex-starved?
Allred was jarred . . . and she's a Vancouver-based therapist who treats sexual addiction and sex abuse. "Where this crossed the line for me is its intrusiveness," she said. "Suddenly, it's like being in the red-light district of any large city. Victoria's Secret has become part of the sex industry."
Oh, I don't know. Amsterdam really has Ye Olde Shoppingtown beat on that score.
If you go to Washington state's Health Provider Credentials Search you can look up the licenses of therapists, BTW.
But an amicable solution has, alas, not been reached at the mall.
After complaining to the store and the mall, Allred wrote an opinion piece 10 days ago for The Columbian newspaper. Little has changed. Mall manager Brent Wise, who didn't return my calls, told Allred he was looking for "an amicable solution that satisfies everybody," and this appears to be it: one thong has been semi-hidden behind a sheer nightie.
Duin says in his column that he's told the problem with pornography is that it blurs the line between fantasy and reality. You wonder who told him that, as he doesn't say. Maybe...a "Vancouver-based therapist?"
But Duin really outdoes even Allred with this passage:
Victoria's Secret's latest salute to the salacious is no walk in the park. It features a dozen anorexic mannequins wearing the usual tell-all lingerie. Instead of the typically suggestive poses, however, the figures look like streetwalkers, concubines or those vapid, drunk college chicks in the "Girls Gone Wild" videos.
How exactly does Duin know all about vapid, drunk college chicks? The rightier they are, the freakier they are, I guess.
It looks like Allred has a little momentum going into the holidays. Wonder what she and her fellow wingnuts will decide is not allowed after the new year starts?
Portions of this are cross-posted at my silly little blog, Columbian Watch.
As a side note, Allred's guest editorial in The Columbian showed up "by permission of author" on a virulently anti-choice website called Life Pac (warning:graphic photos) within a day or two of publication. The page has links to various companies to boycott, the usual rage against the local library for being, in their view, not tough enough on internet porn. So I'm not sure this is just some regular old concerned Mom.
You can email The Oregonian columnist Steve Duin at Steveduin@aol.com
Ask him how he knows so much about drunk college chicks.