Fritinancy

How Prohibition Changed Branding and Language

Next month marks the 92nd anniversary of the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States.” Twelve months after ratification, at midnight on January 17, 1920, the Prohibition Era began; it lasted until 1933, when the 21st Amendment was ratified.

You may think you know something about Prohibition—speakeasies, Al Capone, Eliot Ness, bathtub gin, bootleggers. You may even be picking up historical tidbits from amid the entertaining fictions of Boardwalk Empire, the HBO series, produced by Martin Scorsese, that concludes its first season on Sunday night. But trust me: until you’ve read Daniel Okrent’s splendid history of the era, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition—published earlier this year—you’re as uninformed as I was about what the historian Taylor Branch, in a jacket blurb, calls “the one glaring ‘whoops!’ in our constitutional history.”

Source: The Social Work History Station.

Okrent, who was the New York Times’s first public editor, did a staggering amount of research for Last Call—his “sources” section is almost 19 pages long—yet there isn’t a dry (pun intended) sentence in the book. It’s a thoroughly intoxicating read.

There’s the stranger-than-fiction cast of characters, including Mabel Walker Willebrandt, aka “The Prohibition Portia,” who served as assistant attorney general of the United States from 1921 to 1929 and liked to start her day with an ice-cold bath; Warren Bidwell Wheeler, general counsel of the Anti-Saloon League, who was considered by a critic to be “the most masterful and powerful single individual in the United States”—and who is largely forgotten today; and Sam Bronfman, the Moldovan-Jewish-Canadian liquor magnate who supplied a thirsty United States with an endless stream of bootlegged liquor. “It was almost fated that the Bronfman family would make its fortune from alcoholic beverages,” Okrent writes; “in Yiddish, which was their mother tongue, bronfen is the word for ‘liquor.’”

Then there's Okrent’s writing, which is packed with wry humor and pungent turns of phrase. “The prevailing government parsimony” of the Prohibition era, he writes, “hovered like a scowl over the administrations of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover.” Of the propaganda aimed at presidential candidate Al Smith, Okrent writes: “It was the sort of speculation that could make a Catholic-hater quiver with the joy that can be induced only by the thrill of loathing.”

For me, many of the book’s most fascinating revelations have to do with language and culture. From slang to brand names, from travel to politics, Prohibition had an impact that far outlasted its 13-year tenure.

Here are some of the ways Prohibition changed American English and the language of commerce.

Give Me Some Men

What a week! First, the hometown team won the World Series. Then my home state, in a spasm of common sense, rejected two candidates who had spent humongous chunks of their fortunes in an attempt to prove that they’d be wise stewards of the public coffers.

And just now I’ve learned that two of my very favorite linguistic phenomena—man-words and “-preneur” coinages—have been combined into a single name: MENtrepreneurs™.

Amy Reynaldo, a Twitter pal and the author of the enlightening Crossword Fiend blog, alerted me to this development in an email in which she forwarded a message a (male) Facebook friend* had received. I reprint it here verbatim.

Hey, [USR-FirstName], you’re invited to join in our conversation about your business and how you’re doing under the current economy. Fifteen million men run a small business completely alone. We constitute half of ALL businesses in the US. 
Join a FREE forum or small online group and share about your business while bonding with other enterprising men-of-valor based on trust and strengths. You’ll get:
Valuable Tools
Critical Feedback
Trusted Peer Support
Reduced Chronic Stress
Expanding Opportunities
[USR-FirstName], come learn some things an easier way than alone!
Daniel Comp
MENtrepreneurs™ Founder
MENtrepreneurs™ is a for-profit social enterprise created by Intelligent Netware LLC

Here’s Amy’s postscript:

Not only have the MENtrepreneurs made up a man-word—not only have they hyphenated “men-of-valor”—not only are they ridiculous at the core because male business owners are hardly a put-upon group in need of special networking opportunities—but they also have sent out a mass mailing of letters addressed to “Hey, [USR-FirstName].”

I’d like to second all of Amy’s comments and add a few of my own:

• Preposition watch: we live in an economy, not under one.
• “Reduced Chronic Stress” still sounds chronic and stressful.
• Surely there is a more felicitous way to say “come learn some things an easier way than alone!”

I do recommend checking out the MENtrepreneurs website. There you’ll discover an “Induction” section (what? not a MENifesto?) that compares business failure to “deaths from polio, and most scourges of mankind”; an article titled “Riding My MANstrual Cycle” (I am not making this up); and this plaintive appeal (all punctuation, spelling, and capitalization sic):

Roughly 14 million men-in-business in the US are dying of solitude, without a single employee, and yet we create 71% of all new jobs. We naturally hide in our caves hoping our issues will ‘work out’ or go away. That’s NOT valor. Isolation is literally a health risk equal to obesity or smoking. Why Step up and change the statistics? Because we MUST.

For you gearheads, there’s a nonsensical formula amid the rotating home-page banners.

Please don’t ask me to explain the semicolon after “because.” Maybe it’s a math thing.

The site is filled with misspellings (“What Other’s Say”; “We GUARENTEE IT!”), poor grammar (from the founder’s letter: “I remember laying on the floor”), RANDOM CAPS, and peculiar “quotes.”

But let it not be said that MENtrepreneurs founder Daniel Comp is a male supremacist. He and his wife, Angelina Musik-Comp, also founded MOMtrepreneurs, a network for business-minded women. (I’ll grant that MENtrepreneurs is a slightly less craptastic name than MOMtrepreneurs.) The Comps have a poignant personal story, which they tell frequently. Numerous endorsements—from Kay Bailey Hutchison, the U.S. senator from Texas (herself not a mantrepreneur), Rick “Good Hair” Perry, the just-reelected Texas governor, and others—attest to Daniel Comp’s brilliance and empathy.

I hope that’s fair and balanced enough for you. Because honestly, MENtrepreneurs is so painfully close to self-parody I don’t know whether to laugh, groan, or send a condolence card. Thanks for the tip, Amy!

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* UPDATE: The Facebook friend has agreed to be identified. He is the estimable Mike Selinker, a game developer who also creates puzzles for Games magazine. Mike’s blog, “The Most Beautiful Things,” is well worth reading; I suggest you start with a Sept. 26 post titled “The Most Beautiful Modern Neologism: Crowdsourcing.”

Something for the Boys

With Father’s Day just over a week away, your thoughts may naturally be turning to mirdles. Or to Core Precision Undershirts. Or even to Bubble Butt Underwear with Frontal Enhancement (with Anti-Muffin Top elastic).

Welcome to the compressed, lifted, and superconfident world of mirdles: shapewear (or, let’s be honest, girdles) for men. Please open your man-words dictionary and make the necessary insertion.

Spanx, which has achieved near-generic status in the women’s-shapewear market, introduced its Man Spanx line in February, and the cotton “compression undershirts,” at $55 to $58 a pop, have been “a huge retail hit,” according to a recent New York Times report. “Men may not be talking about it, but they’re buying it,” Nickelson Wooster*, men’s fashion director at Neiman Marcus, told the Times.

Man Spanx may have the edge in name recognition, but it’s not alone, or even first, in the category. Sculptees, whose name strikes me as too diminutive for manly men, sells torso-constraining “sculptwear for men,” including the Pex, the Slim, and the T-Slim. Bubbles sells products for women as well as men (to understand why the company is called Bubbles, check out the women’s “butt bras”); the brand’s giddy nomenclature includes the Toolbox, the Jackpot, the Beach Bum, and—for the ladies—Bump-on-a-Rump. Bubbles also wins the Sassiest Slogan prize: “Take Your Gluteus to the Maximus!”

While a some men may buy mirdles to look svelter, others require a more technical sell. Writing last year in the Boston Globe (“Me and My Mirdle”), Christopher Muther, who may be responsible for coining “mirdle,” explained:

The trick with men . . . is that you can't call a girdle a girdle. You have to stress that it has other benefits, like it will help with posture (I know so many men who are concerned about their posture) or a sore back.

That’s where Equmen—an Australian brand whose name, I’m guessing, resembles “acumen,” emphasis on the men—swaggers in. I lifted the image at the top of the page from the Equmen website to show you just how very, very seriously this company takes its geekery. No sly double-entendres here: Instead, it’s all about the “Core Precision,” the “targeted ventilation,” and the “HELIX-MAPPING™ body response technology.” (In case you couldn’t tell at a glance, the drawing is a diagram of HELIX-MAPPING™.)

Here, for example, is a testimonial from a physiotherapist about the efficacy of Equmen garments:

The garments definitely help with postural support as they encourage optimal horizontal extension and retraction of the Scapulae, (upper central key points) giving a Scapulothoracic neutral posture. The value in this for function is to lessen kyphotic stress in the primary curvature which physiologically eases counter-stress in the secondary curvature of the segments. The wearer should therefore be aware of less effort and mechanical stress particularly with prolonged standing or sitting and may, indeed, notice improved ergonomics with upper limb activity.

I’m sure we’re all in favor of less kyphotic stress in the primary curvature.

In the end, though, it may take more than improved ergonomics to get men into the new tighty whities. As the Man Spanx ads put it, “Behind every man is a really great woman.” Or as a pushy determined customer named Christine wrote to Equmen:

I received my order the other day, and without any explanation handed the v-neck undershirt to my husband. After wrestling into it (he hates anything close-fitting) and moaning about how tight it was, his face suddenly change [sic] to amazement! He said he couldn't believe how great he felt, his sciatic pain stopped IMMEDIATELY, said he felt he could fill his lungs with more air and swears he's 2 inches (5cm) taller.

After a few hours he took the shirt off because he said it was making him feel exhausted having his back made so straight, but next morning it was back on again making him feel like Terminator LOL.

Atta girl, Christine! I’m LOLing with you. Your next assignment: Get him into mantyhose.

Previously on Underwear Week:

• Diapers cross the poop barrier.
• Why bra sizing makes no sense.
• Relief for the heartbreak of cameltoe.

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* Nickelson Wooster! A relative of Bertie’s, perhaps?

Relief for the Heartbreak of Cameltoe

Underwear Week continues at Fritinancy with a product whose name manages to be both descriptive and suggestive . . . in every sense.

Here’s the story. Shannon (no last name given) was in yoga class when she had an uh-oh moment:

Cute tight little yoga pants, front row, right by the big mirrors for the whole class to check out my yoga poses, and something else...the dreaded... “cameltoe.” That's where the idea for Camelflage was conceived.

Yes, Camelflage, “the original visual privacy garment”; the panty “specifically designed to smooth out your feminine parts under tight clothing.”

Or as Shannon puts it:

a patent pending women's panty that has a built in flexible, breathable, insert to smooth out her "Labia Majora" AKA "cameltoe." Covering the insert is a Sportek wicking fabric that pulls moisture away from your body and keeps you dry.

(Technically speaking, labia majora are not “AKA cameltoe” unless they’re squooshed into too-tight clothes. But hey—props to Shannon for getting “labia majora” onto an underwear website.)

Camelflage: Say it soft and it’s almost like praying. I am in awe of that name. And the juxtaposition of high and low—the vivid street slang of cameltoe, the coy fastidiousness of the tagline and “feminine parts,” the pastel prettiness of the logo and site design—is some kind of brilliant.

Hat tip to Beauty Marks, who writes:

“Visual privacy undergarment” - you just can't beat that as a product descriptor.

Be sure to link through to the Beauty Marks post and from there to the “Camel Toe” video, a musical warning about crotchal calamity.

Why Bra Sizing Makes No Sense

I'm assuming this subject will be of more direct interest to my female readers, but I hope the gentlemen will be amused (titillated?) by the photo and will stay for the marketing story.

Women’s clothing sizes are notoriously inconsistent and irrational—they vary from brand to brand, country to country, and year to year—but brassiere sizing is subject to a particularly baroque illogic, at least in the United States. That is, it seemed like illogic until I learned, just recently, how it came to be.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, bras are sized in two dimensions: band circumference and cup depth (or volume). The band should fit snugly directly under the breasts, which is where the first measurement is taken. But here’s where the weirdness comes in: That number—let’s say it’s 32.5 inches—is not your band size. No, your band size is that number plus an additional 4 or 5 inches—in other words, 36 or 38. And your cup size is the difference in inches between your underbust measurement and your actual bust measurement.

So why the addition exercise? Why can’t we just buy a band size to match our actual underbust measurement? (This is, in fact, the way it works in Europe: If you’re 70 centimeters under your bust,  you’ll wear a size-70 bra.)

I happened upon the answer while browsing a the website of a lingerie retailer called HerRoom.* The site includes an extensive bra-fitting section—because bra fitting, as we all know, requires years of advanced study—and one of its features is a six-and-a-half-minute video called “How to Measure and Fit a Bra,” narrated by HerRoom’s founder and president, Tomima Edmark.** It's full of interesting information: Did you know, for example, that the tape-fitting system was devised by bra manufacturers in the 1930s, and was never intended to be used by women larger than 38D? Well, now you do.

But the most fascinating revelation for me was about those mysterious extra inches. Here’s Ms. Edmark:

Now, why do we add these inches to our measurement to find our band size? Well, it’s actually a fun story about early marketing. Just after WWII when this system was created, the ideal hourglass figure of the day measured 36,24,36. Women wanted to think their measurements were close to this ideal. The manufacturers needed the under bust measurement to make the bra fit correctly since the actual bust measurement of say 36 wasn’t helpful. Thus they hatched the idea of adding the additional inches to make a woman’s bra size sound more desirable. A 36B certainly sounded more desirable than a 31B. So, this is why the inches are added, and we continue with it still today.

“A fun story ”? More like “those dumb dames will believe anything we tell them.” It was the original vanity sizing, and women fell for it, even though it entailed a pointless extra step in an already tedious and frustrating measurement process. (“Round to the closest whole inch, either up or down. For example, if your measurement is 29 3/8", round to 29". If your measurement is 29 1/2" or more, round to 30".” Would men put up with this? I think not.)

Curiously, bra cup sizing developed (so to speak) independently from the band-measurement chicanery. Warners, a still-extant bra manufacturer, created the A-B-C-D cup system for the U.S. market in 1935. According to the fashion-history website Fashion-Era, it wasn't until “well into the 1950s ” that Britain adopted the U.S. standard; U.K. corset manufacturers used “coy terms like junior and medium.” But confusion still reigns: for larger cup sizes, U.S. manufacturers pile on the Ds (DD, DDD, DDDD), while their  British and European counterparts more logically proceed to E, F, and G.

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The 1963 Maidenform ad, and many others from the “I dreamed . . .” series, from Found in Mom's Basement.

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* It's an excellent website, and I’m sure it’s a wonderful company, but I still maintain that “HerRoom” sounds like phlegmy throat clearing.

 ** Before she founded HerRoom, Tomima Edmark made a fortune as the inventor of “the wildly successful Topsy Tail,” a hair accessory. Her unusual first name, she tells us, “is a venerable family name from the Orkney Islands off the northern tip of Scotland” that has been passed down through her mother’s family since at least the 18th century. It’s pronounced “like ‘Jemima,’ but with a ‘T’.”

Word of the Week: Yoot

Yoot: A member of the YouTube generation; someone under the age of 20.

In the recently published The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture, authors Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant trace the history of advertising from the mid-19th century to the present day. One of their chapters is titled "Persuading Yoots." YouTube, they write, is revolutionizing marketing by enabling "democratized ad messaging."

Harry Hurt II, reviewing the book in the New York Times, writes:

A large chunk of YouTube’s audience, he [sic] notes, is under the age of 20 — the so-called Yoots, who account for $570 billion in annual buying power. The authors contend that to reach the Yoot demographic, marketers must learn to create “a whole new language” for selling products and services that taps into the Yoots’ fondness for customizing and personalizing messages.

Coincidentally (maybe), Yoot is also a variant pronunciation of "youth." It's perhaps best remembered from this exchange between Vinny, played by Joe Pesci, and the judge, played by Fred Gwynne, in My Cousin Vinny (1992). (See section 29):

Judge: “Did you say 'yoots'?”
Vinny: “Yeah, two yoots.”
Judge: “What is a 'yoot'?”
Vinny: “Oh, excuse me, your honor. Two youths.”

It's All About YOU

My latest Visual Thesaurus column, "The You Decade," was published yesterday. In it I revisit the changing meaning of you in marketing, a theme I've touched on in a couple of blog posts: "The City • The Committee • And You" (about Philadelphia's new city slogan) and ("Life • Liberty • And You") and this post about the marketing campaigns of Yahoo and HTC.

Access to the column is restricted to subscribers (do it!). Here's an excerpt:

For better and worse, the new You can be found throughout the culture. Dr. Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen have penned a series of best-selling YOU books that tell you all about the world's most fascinating subject. A partial list includes YOU: The Owner's Manual; YOU: On a Diet; YOU: Staying Young; and YOU: The Smart Patient. They may have been following the advice of numerous business-writing guides that urge "you-attitude" — putting yourself in the customer's shoes and addressing him or her directly.

And the you focus goes all the way to the top. President Obama's version of a fireside chat is called Your Weekly Address — and you can watch it on (what else?) YouTube.

 

Now a confession. In a comment, Richard P.—whom I know through Twitter and through his fine copywriting business, Lucid Content—noted that he'd read a similar article several years ago by Christopher Hitchens. A few hours later, Richard tweeted me with the link.* Honestly, I hadn't seen the article (which has the same title, "The You Decade," as my column) until yesterday. And I did do some searching.

That aside, the article is well worth reading, and only partly because the opinions expressed therein coincide with my own. Hitchens is always fun to read. Here's a bit of what he has to say:

A room-service menu, for example, now almost always offers "your choice" of oatmeal versus cornflakes or fruit juice as opposed to vegetable juice. Well, who else's choice could it be? Except perhaps that of the people who decide that this is the range of what the menu will feature. Fox TV famously and fatuously claims, "We report. You decide." Decide on what? On what Fox reports? Online polls promise to register what "you" think about the pressing issues of the moment, whereas what's being presented is an operation whereby someone says, "Let's give them the idea that they are a part of the decision-making process."

You have a good day now, OK?

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* Richard says he'd had no luck finding the article until he hit on the search term "Hitchens on the second person pronoun." Teh Google, it is a most demanding mistress.

Choosy

My latest column for Visual Thesaurus, "Multiple Choice," looks at the ways marketers use choose and choice. Access is restricted to subscribers; here's a free taste:

When it isn't signifying "autonomy," choice may be a marketer's code word for "specialness." One of Pepsi Cola's most famous ad campaigns, which ran from 1984 to 1991 and starred Michael Jackson, was "The Choice of a New Generation." (Translation: Hello, young person! Why would someone as hip as you drink a stodgy, old-fashioned soda like the one that rhymes with Shmoka-Shmola?) "Natural" choices bloomed in the 1990s, when unnatural choices fell out of favor: You could choose Natural Choice pet food, funerary urns, disposable diapers, non-dairy creamer, chemical preservatives, coated paper, or cheese.

Choice is most flattering in its adjectival sense — select, superior, elite. That's how we're meant to perceive Ohio-based Choice Brands ("a wholesale appliance distributor for Brands of Choice"), Choice Hotels International (an economy-to-mid-market chain that, naturally, offers a Choice Privileges program), and President's Choice, Canada's largest private-label brand (food and consumer products, mostly, but also financial services). With President's Choice, we get a double whammy of elite-ness: If the president (of the company) chose it, it must be really special! But here's a little secret: All of these Choices are wishful thinking. Truly elite brands never broadcast "elite" in their names.

Check out the article, and the rest of Visual Thesaurus, here.

Hauntrepreneurs

 You probably know about my fascination with the productive -preneur suffix ("Enterprising Language," Sept. 1). Everyone, it seems, is a specialized entrepreneur these days—a mompreneur, solopreneur, warrior-preneur, or journopreneur.*

Here's a new-to-me -preneur, just in time for Halloween: Hauntrepreneurs International (tagline: "Haunted Attractions for Sale!").

That's a dandy coinage: It's witty, it echoes the sound of entrepreneur, and it instantly communicates its meaning.

The website, however, is short on wit and long on get 'er done:

Hauntrepreneurs® International is the only broker specializing in selling previously owned Haunted Houses, Haunted Hay Rides, Haunted Trails, Dark Rides and Haunting Equipment for the Haunted Attraction Industry. Formed in 1987 the company has sold hundreds of attractions to Amusement Parks, Family Fun Centers and individuals all over the country.

Working as a middleman Hauntrepreneurs® International hammers out price negotiations, prepares contracts and makes sure that both parties act in good faith throughout the process. In addition, Hauntrepreneurs® International can provide services to the buyer/seller including Installation Assistance, Event Consulting, Refurbishment and Attraction Redesign.

“We put our reputation on the line each time we bring a buyer and seller together, and strive to create a ‘Win win’ opportunity for the clients!”

"Win win"? Ugh, ugh.

Which is not to say there aren't treasures to be found here. Do, for instance, take a few minutes to check out the "attractions" for sale. Here is a very partial list of the props included with the Haunted Estate (15,000 square feet; "only $175,000"):

20 Tiki Torches
1 Old Style Dryer
1 Body Bag (real)
1 Stretcher/Gurney
3 Medical Back Boards
10 Soft Stuffed Bodies
2 Oscilloscopes
1 Resuscitation Annie
1 Defibrillator (real)
1 Wheelchair
1 Electric Typewriter
1 Exercise Bike
1 Trunk
2 set Funeral Parlor Curtains
1 Electric Leaf Blower
1 Electric Sparking Chain Saw

Check, check, check ... hold on: Exercise bike?

Hauntrepreneurs International is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Operators are standing by, no doubt cackling ghoulishly. 

Hat tip: Erin McKean. Image from Buried.com.

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* I have searched in vain for manurepreneur, a coinage in search of a business plan.

Undeath Takes a Holiday

There's never been a better time to be undead, what with True Blood, Twilight, and The Vampire Diaries infusing fresh blood into the vampire genre and zombies taking over banks and companies. For your Halloween shopping enjoyment, Comics Alliance has unearthed the worst of this year's vampire-themed products—which, depending on your perspective, may also be considered the cream of the crop. 

Not only can you buy a Buffy the Vampire Slayer wooden stake—yes, an actual piece of wood—for $100, but you can also own a preserved pig heart (very similar to a human heart, anatomically) with a stake through it. The latter trinket will set you back $225, but you do get a wooden display chest in the bargain.

I learned a new word from the Comics Alliance people: "reborning." It refers to the practice of painting a doll to make it look more like a real baby. Combine reborning with undead and you get this winsome keepsake:

Wook at the cute widdle fangs!

I have no idea how much it cost, because it's sold out at the Wicked Little Things Etsy store. However, the same vendor still has a different OOAK (one-of-a-kind) Reborn Vampire Horror Fantasy Doll in stock for $60 (shipping extra).

For sheer weirdness, however, you can't beat the Sexy Vampire Menstrual Goddess XL/Postpartum Cloth Pad, which bears the welcoming image of a suspiciously healthy-looking undead dude.

It too is an Etsy item, but you'll also find it on Regretsy, an unaffiliated site whose name speaks for itself. (Tagline: "Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet.") I'm in awe of the simple perfection of Regretsy's title for the SVMGXL/PCP: "The Curse."

(Hat tip: Mr. WordsWorth on Twitter.)

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Check out my previous posts about Halloween branding:

- The pumpkin festival in my local cemetery (2006).

- A few of my favorite necro-brands (2007). 

- Vampire wine (2007).