Holiday Shirtlessness

Gentle IMS members, Valentine's Day is upon us.  May we all experience some excellent shirtlessness on this day!  I have heard this day referred to as Singles Awareness Day (SAD), but I prefer to think of it as Buy Yourself Chocolate Day because if you can't love yourself, who can you love?  But seriously, Valentine's Day like almost every other holiday except for Arbor Day has turned into a commercial experience designed to make one group of people feel sad and to make the rest of the people pay exorbitant prices to eat.  I refuse to feel sad or pay high prices which may leave me on my own, but at least I know I have you, dear IMS members continuing to fight for free access to male shirtlessness everywhere.  In the spirit of holiday shirtlessness, I give you the Old Spice Man whose series of Christmas Old Spice ads continue to make me laugh.  I think being awakened by his gentle whispers would be very nice.  If only my name was Lisa, Angela, Pamela, and/or Renee.  And let's face it, Christmas and Valentine's Day are becoming almost the same holiday in terms of commercial pressure to spend and buy. 

I'm still mulling over the issues I raised in recent posts about how only featuring one group of people can create the illusion that that group is the only one with a certain attribute, like say sexiness or worthiness.  I have been having a hard time myself finding non-white shirtlessness to post, and I know it's not because there aren't plenty of non-white males taking their shirts off and looking good.  But the media does not seem to celebrate it and by inundating the airwaves and internet with only one kind of image, it creates the fallacy that the greater public only wants that kind of shirtlessness.  The same in theater, when only one kind of story gets told over and over again, the perception becomes that that is the only story that anyone is interested in.  So I'd just like to say that I love it when Asian, African-American, and Latino men take their shirts off in the media.  They are beautiful and I want more!

Yours in diverse shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS