The Lame Game

Ice cream, strippers, and Amurican identity

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Name
diomedes

Ice cream, strippers, and Amurican identity

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So today I went with my brother and a friend to 7/11 for dessert.  On the way there I ran into another friend, Connie, who was just leaving a conversation with her friend.  I asked Connie if she'd like to join us on our hunt for ice cream and she decided to join us, explaining on the way that her friend's name was "Amber."  "That's a stripper's name," I remarked candidly.  Connie laughed and said that Amber was "as far as possible from being a stripper (a Pussycat Doll?)."

That got me thinking about names in general; specifically that Amber had overcome one of the greatest hardships in modern industrialized society: having a stripper name.  Now, not all stripper names are exclusively stripper names but, in most cases, those with stripper names who show even a hint of strippericity are precluded from a normal life in non-stripper society. 

Let's take the name "Megan" as an example:  Let's look at the two most popular Megans Google can find, Megan Fox and Megan McCain.  Megan Fox is known as a "socially acceptable" stripper; choosing the currently high class route of taking her clothes off for lots of money in movies almost everyone sees.*  Megan Fox had the choice, early in life, whether or not to be the girl in the sandbox who threw sand at the other kids or who would suck on lollipops all the time - she made her choice.  Ever since those fateful years Ms. Fox has pursued her career as a stripper actively, washing cars in "auditions" for work.**  Megan McCain took a different route.  Back in the sandbox Ms. McCain lectured other kids on the evils of homosexuality and other "Amurican" values.  But one fateful day, on her father's campaign trail, she chose to dress up for the cameras.  Normally this wouldn't be considered a big thing, most people would say "Oh, so Republicans can be attractive," but, because of her unfortunately PG-13 name, she didn't become the poster-girl for the Republican Party so much as its pin-up girl (hell yeah I'm good).  Ann Coulter followed this same route; deliberately portraying herself as a semi-equestrian sex symbol for Republicans yet, unlike Megan McCain, Coulter is now known as the poster-girl of the Republican party.  Poor Megan McCain, her name is both her only claim to fame and the only reason she won't even be taken even half seriously in life.

So in my own way I pity them.  All those Ambers, Megans, Taras,*** and other unfortunately named girls who grow up conscious of the leers of their peers; egging them into taking off their clothes and washing a rich man's car for money.



*This is different from Pornstardom because "Megan Fox," unlike "Candy Inurpants," is a stripper name, not a pornstar name.  Megan Fox also makes much more money than the average pornstar ("high class" pornstar?).
**http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/08/michael-bay-filmed-megan-fox-washing-his-ferrari-as-part-of-her/
***I excepted "Brittany" from the list of obvious stripper names because of Brittany Murphy - the anomaly who, even though she posed for Maxim, seems oddly not-strippery.  Weird.  Perhaps it's just me.
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