| |
Big
Business
by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
"Sara
Lee owns Hanes.
Got it? Hanes, manufacturer of stretchy clothing of all
types for all ages, sizes and genders. T-shirts. Elastic waisted knit shorts.
Briefs. Huge, forgiving white underpants. Jammies. Hanes. If Hanes manufactures
any type of clothing which is not accommodating and yielding and comforting, I
do not know about it." |
|
A
person can learn so much browsing the internet. It is like having subscriptions
to hundreds and hundreds of newspapers which are delivered to you each day – and,
better than newspapers, you do not have to crawl under a rose bush or shimmy under
your car to retrieve the internet; it is not soggy on rainy days and it does not
turn your fingers black. The obvious downside is that you may no longer have a
rubberband ball in your junk drawer and you cannot line a birdcage with the internet
when you are done with it. Don’t even try.
You can learn so much from the
internet. The world is at your fingertips. Any publication you want, anytime you
want it, is yours, just one little click away. I learn something new from the
internet every time I look at it. Get on it, I guess is the right way to say it.
There I am, little me perched bravely on the back of a humpbacked leviathan, squeezing
tight with my knees, one hand anchored firmly to the mouse and the other waving
in the air as I toss and roll and buck from one fascinating news story to the
next. Ye-Haw!
Today, for example, I learned something very, very interesting.
I think that you may find it interesting too. I want you to read this carefully
and then I want you to pause and take a moment to assimilate the information.
To internalize it. It may change the way you think about some things. Sara
Lee, a name so intimately linked to delicious, moist, golden pound cake that just
reading the name may make you salivate and yearn for a fat slice topped with blueberries
and whipped cream, Sara Lee owns Hanes.
Got it? Hanes, manufacturer of
stretchy clothing of all types for all ages, sizes and genders. T-shirts. Elastic
waisted knit shorts. Briefs. Huge, forgiving white underpants. Jammies. Hanes.
If Hanes manufactures any type of clothing which is not accommodating and yielding
and comforting, I do not know about it. Hanes is the clothing industry’s equivilent
to Grandma, warm and soft and easy. Kind. To my knowledge Hanes does not offer
anything tailored, or stiff or structured.
Sara Lee has owned
Hanes since 1979. That makes it a little more interesting, doesn’t it? As the
collective girth of Americans has expanded from a 32 slim onward and ever upward,
in large part due to our affection for coconut cream pie, double fudge layer cake
and YES! moist, melting, marvelous pound cake, Sara Lee has been there, behind
the scenes with an easy answer to the dilemma an ever increasing circumference
presents us. I know from personal and tragic experience that as one’s youthful
figure begins to melt and reform over the years a nice, roomy pair of elastic
waisted sweat pants are much more comfortable than a pair of jeans. Jeans can
stretch only so far before they quit becoming apparel and become a punishment.
Put on a pair of sweat pants and you may think twice about another piece of cheesecake,
but you are available to be convinced. The same impulse to indulge is easier to
resist if you feel that you are locked in a tightening vise of denim and rivets.
A vise against vice.
I am not one for conspiracy theories. I have heard
that man on the radio, the black helicopter man, the alien invasion man, and have
snickered at him. I thought him mad. But this Sara Lee news has rocked me to my
core, changed my intellectual axis of rotation, as it were. If this is true, what
else is true? Might the FBI be driving diaper service vans around the city
eavesdropping on our dinner table conversations? Might whole fleets of
alien vessels be lurking, hidden on the dark side of the moon? I speak to you
as a woman who has developed, over long years, a figure which started out as chest,
waist, hips and legs but who now sports a physique which resembles nothing so
much as a shopping bag full of yogurt. Not containers of yogurt. Just gooey, formless,
shapeless yogurt. I look like a 160 pound chocolate kiss. I look like a girl who
knows her way around a pound cake.
Is this a problem for me? NO! It is
not a problem for me. Why? Because of sweat pants. Who makes sweat pants? Hanes
makes sweat pants. Who owns Hanes? Sara Lee owns Hanes. Shhh! Did you hear something?
| |
|
