THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511120112
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Elizabeth Simpson
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
As a youngster of the '60s and '70s, I practically grew up with the little Coppertone girl.
You remember the advertisements - the ones with the little girl whose dog is pulling down her swim trunks.
She always evoked a sense of playful innocence as I sunbathed at the local swimming hole.
It was a time of innocence.
When I recently drove by a billboard of a girl portrayed in the same vein, I felt differently.
The sign, off Interstate 664 South as it loops into Interstate 264, shows a drawing of a young girl wearing overalls. The top buckle of her overalls is unhooked, leaving the denim draped along her bare torso and partly naked buttocks.
The sign reads: ``Behind you! Used cars and trucks for less!''
Instead of the warm sentiment I got from the Coppertone girl, I felt uncomfortable.
What did a half-dressed girl have to do with selling cars?
Maybe my feeling has less to do with that picture than it does with our times.
They are not innocent. And neither am I the kid who once slathered on Coppertone oil.
I am now a mother of two little girls. Living in a world that's bombarded by sexual images in ads, art and movies. I've become sensitive about the way women are portrayed in the media. About the swimsuit-clad models who sell everything from automobiles to light beer. About the teenage girls hawking tacos in low-cut leotards.
I'm also a reporter horrified by daily, real-life accounts of sexual abuse of children.
Maybe that's why I squirmed in my car seat. Maybe this little billboard girl is nothing in the grand scheme of today's culture. Maybe she is not even a blip on the radar screen where Calvin Klein poses school children provocatively to advertise blue jeans. Where you can have virtual sex on the Internet. Where you can sing along about rape on the latest CD, and see intricacies of intercourse on the movie screen.
Still, the little girl with drooping overalls bothers me.
I'm told the billboard was meant to be cute and innocent. To grab attention. But there are too many children today who have lost their innocence, through no fault of their own. Too many children for whom this picture will spark more sadness than joy, too many women who will feel degraded.
An image that might have suggested playfulness in the '60s now whispers a troubling complexity.
A lot of people will say I'm one of those women who feel victimized by every image, who takes offense at the most innocent of pictures.
After all, Mike Duman, whose auto sales business the billboard advertises, said only three people out of the thousands who drive by there have called about the sign in the month it's been up.
Duman says I'm making a big deal out of nothing.
But I know one person who doesn't believe that. A week ago I got a call from a man named Tom Wisenbaker.
``I have to go by there three or four times a day, and the more I think about the sign, the madder I get,'' Wisenbaker said. ``I have a 12-year-old girl, and this is not right. I think the public has to stand up and say this isn't good. It's offensive.''
Different images mean different things to different people, but I agree with Wisenbaker. The little billboard girl is a relic of a time, and innocence, long lost. ILLUSTRATION: Photo of advertisement by MORT FRYMAN, The Virginian-Pilot
What does this picture of a half-dressed girl have to do with
selling cars?
by CNB