Can’t a chocolate bar just be a chocolate bar?

Wouldn’t it look delicious simply cracked open, all gooey, just like they make big macs and whoppers look? We won’t be mad if it doesn’t really look that way. It’ll still taste good. Or, maybe a little kid could be biting into one as he’s running around the playground, and we could have a quick flashback to when we were fresh, innocent people. We’d remember how a chocolate bar was our worst vice and how it stuck to the corners of our mouth, saved for later. Or, we could even go back to the good ol’ days when Mr. T or Michael Jordan were eating one – at least they were famous for their unique talents, even if one of those talents is being one the  strangest people  on the planet.

Snickers, Mars, Crunch, 5th Avenue, 3 Musketeers, Almond Joy, Baby Ruth, and Galaxy! These names either speak for the quality of the bar or where the bar may take you or its inspiration. These names have power, charm, substance.

FLAKE. Doesn’t sound like a trustworthy candy bar. Nor does it look like it. For, if it must be  phallic-shaped, must it seductively graze the loose mouth of a woman who appears to be in a “moment” of ecstasy? And must this name be associated as well with this woman-next-door (though not in Lebanon, maybe somewhere in Connecticut)? In other words, could Mr. T be on this billboard, next to the name “Flake”? And if a man didn’t come up with the tag line “Your Moment… Your Chocolate” (read: “It’s all yours baby”), then we can be certain that women can hardly recognize their own faces. Whether this is a Lebanese ad or not, it is at almost every corner. It is only one of the many billboards that polka-dot Beirut, displaying the faces of non-Lebanese women, only second to their jean-butts or push-up bra boobs or loose jaw. The distance between us women on the ground and those dotting our sky is becoming shorter and shorter. And once we stop thinking and speaking up for ourselves, we’ll be friendly next-door neighbors.

I pity the fools who are so narrow-minded that their creativity and line of sight halts at an erection. And, mostly, I pity the fools who cater to that.