RC&D #3 Make Reading Sexy (Part 2)
For all you non-believers who think I’m wasting time trying to make over reading’s image, I offer three quick pieces of evidence that I’m not crazy:
- Products much duller and more innocuous than books have been successfully sexified: Got Milk
- And, I dare you NOT to click this link to see Pamela Anderson in a white bikini reading a copy of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity by Anne Elizabeth Moore. And for the ladies, I have a very hot Matthew McConaughey gently lingering through a tome.
- Consequential Value traffic has more than tripled since my last post. You, dear reader, prove my point.
Now, on to my three propositions announced in my last post…
#1–READING IS EVERY BIT AS GOOD AS SEX–GET THE WORD OUT
Not everyone will achieve a crazy brain orgasm every time they read, but readers know the possibility hungrily awaits them. The pure love of language, the Wow of an epiphany, the intimacy of the world where reading takes you, or like my Laura, just connecting with the brains of her favorite authors–all are at least foreplay for people who read. If you’ve ever stayed up till Pre-dawn: 30 with a can’t-put-down book, you know what a reading-induced brain orgasm is.
When publishers decide what to publish, they should definitely be asking, “Will this book turn people on? Does it turn me on?” To move people from Non-reader to Reader, book purveyors must get the word out that reading is better than sex. Whether it really is or not doesn’t matter. That’s what advertising is for. If publishers can’t convince people that reading is a major Turn On, the converts will be far and few between.
#2–ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE SHOULD PITCH BOOKS
After reading my first post in this series, my friend, Dale Lipshultz, who is Literacy Officer in American Library Association’s Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, said, “Libraries, and I dare say librarians, have a bit of an image problem …” and that “making reading the new sexy” is the right direction. Dale doesn’t want to turn libraries into Hooters restaurants, but she sees the issue: image-wise, reading is considered the province of dull people–like milk drinkers before the launch of the 1994 Got Milk? campaign.
Who would rather show you what’s in the stacks?
So, like the milk people, publishers should start attaching sexy people to books. Models, celebrities, rock stars, country divas, sports icons, heroes. Abercrombie & Fitch’s walls overpower the visitor with naked people selling clothes (ironic, until you realize that the quid pro quo of sex is the real pitch). Put a book in those models’ hands. The covers of all those mags with scantily clad models on at the grocer’s checkout line? Give ‘em a book. And don’t be campy. Publishers, book sellers, and librarians need their equivalent of the “milk mustache.” Maybe this?
#3–CONVINCE THE LADIES THEY NEED A READING MAN
Ladies, I know you think you want a man with Usher’s body, but do you really want some chump who sits on your couch eating Cheetos, consuming your rent money and ordering you to the fridge for his beer all because he can’t read and get a decent j-o-b–even if he is a hunk? This one thing could literally, instantly change the world–women decide that men aren’t getting any (not even Date One) unless he loves to read. Men would be falling all over themselves to stop talking ghetto, stop acting distant and tough, start trying to carry on an intelligible conversation and get serious about a real education and career. (And they would probably still pump a little iron for you.) You KNOW you prefer that, Ladies. Admit it. Better yet, demand it.
SOME VERY SMART WOMEN
So let’s start the revolution right here, right now. Women, go to It’s All About Books and get yourself a “Real Men Read” T-shirt. Wear it to school, on dates, to work. Get your picture taken in it and make it your profile picture on Facebook or MySpace. Show a little leg–I don’t care. Spread the word. Demand for yourself a literate man. Then settle for nothing less. For the long haul, brains are sexier than brawn. And any half-intelligent woman will tell you that a well-read man is very sexy.
And speaking of half-way intelligent. Men could fix the world too if they would quit giving the impression that they will settle for less-than-half-intelligent women as long as they look and act hot. Only weak-brained men limit themselves to Jay Leno’s Jaywalking Allstars.
