Read a Book, Get Oral Sex?
Read a Book, Get Oral Sex? (Reuters)
New York officials were red-faced on Friday after they discovered that clothing ads on city buses that appeared to promote reading suggested a love of books could be rewarded with oral sex. The advertisements that ran on about 200 buses across the city in recent months carried posters displaying a suggestively posed woman in hot pants kneeling among a pile of books beside the snappy slogan “Read Books, Get Brain.” What unhip, unsuspecting local transportation officials did not know was that “get brain” is street slang for oral sex.
The ads — from hip-hop clothing maker Akademiks, which intended the double-entendre — was stripped off New York buses on Friday after transportation officials discovered the street slang meaning. Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Tom Kelly condemned the “vulgar street phrases” in the racy ads he said were “demeaning women.” “To me and I believe to everyone else, while it was done by a clothing line, it would give the impression that it was also promoting reading and literacy,” Kelly told Reuters.
I must confess to being unhip as well; I’ve never heard this particular euphemism.
I guess I don’t understand how this phrase is “demeaning women”. Oral sex is not something that is limited to a certain gender, it goes both ways. If it’s demeaning to women, then it should be for men as well. I just don’t see it.