OINKtales

Saw the most ridiculous thing this weekend while I was out and about:

Yup. That’s right. Justin Bieber has his own perfume. Eau de stinky, hormone-laced, teenage boy.

As a woman in her mid-thirties, I have to ask: Why?

I don’t get it (and I read Tiger Beat in high school, too). Back in the day, Kirk Cameron, John Stamos and Patrick Swayze knew better than to hawk ladies’ perfumes. The times, oh my, how they’re a changin’.

Trying to understand why anyone would think a baby-faced teenage boy makes for a compelling spokesperson for a women’s fragrance, I watched the promotional video. The female in it, presumably a representative of Someday by Justin Bieber‘s target audience, looks ten years older as well as ten feet taller than Bieber. One spritz and the pubescent-of-the-moment materializes to nuzzle her neck. She dreamily floats into the air on his kisses. With a stiff wind blowing, they awkwardly embrace. At one point, it looks as though he is trying to give her a piggy back ride (I can too pick you up!) and in another she clasps his head to her breast, which comes off less ‘come hither’ and more ‘breastfed infant’. Pantomined ecstasy over and feet on the ground, they exchange a look – puppy dog longing on his part, circumspect assessment on hers.

Someday, he will be old enough to hold her attention without having to pay her for it. Someday, they will look back on this experience and laugh embarrassedly. Someday, he will have a ghost-writer type his memoir wherein he will whine about having lost his youth and innocence in the media circus that is his world.

Contemplating too-big-for-their-britches teenage boys led me to recall the one I met on a cruise ship last fall. I had spent the day at the beach snorkeling, drinking Tequila, para-sailing, drinking Tequila, swimming and laughing with a fantastic group of women most of whom I had met just days before. By the time dinner was over, though, my buzz had worn off and I was grumpy. Instead of going to bed, I went to the dance party on the lido deck where I promptly parked myself on a lounge chair in a prime people-watching position. Within moments, I noticed a tall boy in a red shirt with a white cross. He looked to be around sixteen years old. His shirt proclaimed he was an “Orgasm Donor.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Look.” I pointed him out to my friend, the ZumbaQueen.

“Oh my God,” she said, cracking up. “That’s terrible!”

“Where are his parents?” I asked, rhetorically. “Do they know he’s wearing a shirt like that?”

We watched him strut among the people at the party, high-fiving his friends and leering at girls and women alike.

“I’m going to call him over,” I said. “That is not okay.”

“Mary!” she admonished me. “Be nice!”

Throwing off my blanket, I waited until his orbit carried him closer. “Honey,” I called to him, crooking a finger. “C’mere.”

He puffed his chest out, pulled his hat more sideways and sauntered over. When he reached me, he leaned down, all bluff and bravado. I smiled at him, looked him dead in the eye and said, “Are you even old enough to shave?”

Someday.