I know this campaign has been replaced by the ever classy 'Sex Sells' motif, featuring pairs of jeans in sexual positions in the window displays (I guess they can call it sex education, not everybody is enlightened in the merits of 'reverse cowgirl' apparently) so I'm running a little late on the uptake (bad Merrie!)
Though, here I am at long last, delivering on a promise to my dear readers.
So, the first I heard about this campaign really was when Dazed and Confused gave away T-shirts with their January issue featuring the 'Be Stupid' slogan. I'm unashamedly a clever person and don't think there's anything wrong with being clever or wanting to be seen as clever (and yes there is a difference between being clever and being academic, you don't need to have a clutch of A grades to be a clever person, some of the cleverest people I know and admire aren't book learners, I'm not that great on paper myself, but they're still smart people) so the T-shirts didn't impress for a start. In my humble opinion, wearing a shirt that says 'I'm stupid' is akin to wearing a shirt that says 'I'm a massive slag'. Either way, not cool.
So when I started seeing the full campaign around town (my bus stop is opposite the Diesel store I frequently see their window displays) I originally thought, hey it's just a bit of a joke right? But then, seeing posters everywhere that pretty much glorify acting stupid, even if you're not, and trash being smart, well... it started to become a bugbear.
Why does 'Stupid (have) the stories'? You can be so smart and be outrageous and do mad things and have the best anecdotes... it's not a monopoly for stupid.
All this, 'it's cool to be stupid' stuff reeks of the modern attitude that being clever doesn't count or indeed makes you a boring person, though in my experience, the cleverest people are definitely the ones that party hardest...
Until next time dear reader,
MerrieGirl
xxx
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