Published April 25, 2004 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
If you hang around an Iron Range newspaper long enough, you’re bound to encounter a well-dressed person lamenting that we print nothing positive in this here infernal rag. “Why don’t you report POSITIVE news like you do all the negativity?” the impeccably groomed will say.
Well, now’s the big moment. Nothing negative today, folks. Somebody from Hibbing – one of us – has been prominently featured in a Victoria’s Secret TV underwear ad. Not many Iron Rangers get an honor like that (or become shamefully exploited by a leering, male-dominated sex industry, depending on your worldview).
Of course, that somebody is famed folk rock singer Bob Dylan.
Don’t worry – if you missed it, Bob does not appear wearing the lingerie. Dylan does however get to ogle a healthy young woman wearing an angel outfit that just might slow your personal ascent to heaven.
Well, good for him. It beats most of my workdays, that’s for sure. It does beg the question, though, why is influential poet musician Bob Dylan now selling fancy ladies underwear?
I’m not the only person to ask this question. Columnist Seth Stevenson of State.com wrote an April 12 piece entitled “Tangled Up in Boobs” that poses an identical query. Stevenson came up with several possible answers, ranging from an unexplained need for money to pure Dylan whimsy. I like Stevenson’s other theory, though. He writes, “I also wouldn’t totally discount the idea that he’s playing a sly, decades-in-the-making practical joke. Newspaper reports have noted that in 1965, when asked what might tempt him to sell out, Dylan said, ‘Ladies undergarments.’”
That Bob – maybe he’s just following through on a 30-year-old vow to show up that reporter. It makes more sense than Bob Dylan waking up one morning, spontaneously bellowing: “I shall endorse underwear today!” It also makes more sense than the marketing director of Victoria’s Secret waking up one morning, shouting: “I’ve got it – we get Bob Dylan!”
I don’t know how to sell lingerie and I sure don’t know how to buy it. Whenever I pass within 10 feet of one of those stores I become Lenny from “Of Mice and Men.” (It’s pretty, George – Pretty!) Thus I dare not presume to know how women select their knickers. Until recently, though, I believed that Bob Dylan seldom influenced women’s underwear choices, other than I presumed that most women would someday like to display their underwear to men more attractive than Bob Dylan.
That’s why the Bob Dylan Victoria’s Secret ad is all the more alarming.
What’s the message here? If you wear Victoria’s Secret underwear, someone like Bob Dylan will ogle you? Or is the message really if you have a lot of money you can look like Bob Dylan and still have half-naked supermodels trolling around your house. Tough one – I think I’ll need a judge’s ruling on this. Either way, it seems to defy most standard marketing logic (Rule Number One: Don’t frighten people when they’re almost naked).
If you somehow missed this 30-second underwear gem, you might be safe. It seems like one of those ads run only for a short time to get people talking.
Meantime, be proud, Hibbing. One of your own has reached new heights in the schilling of lingerie. And Bob, don’t worry; you’re still tops in my book. If this ladies’ underwear experience doesn’t make up for being passed over as a Nobel Laureate, I don’t know what will.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.