Jack Paar, star of The Tonight Show in the 1950s-60s, introduced the blonde bombshell with that mammary memorable line: “What can I say about my next guest except . . . Here They Are, Jayne Mansfield.
It was a different time then, totally, when I grew up in “the world’s playground,” Atlantic City, NJ, ogling buxom babes on the salty boardwalk.
The current flap over the inappropriate memo that a now jobless Google manager sent around got me to thinking about my own views of women and how they’ve evolved over the years. Today I regard women as totally equal to men in the workplace. In PR I’ve found women often superior, especially working the Internet with ballerina-like fingers that dance nimbly across keyboards.
You might say, as a manager and now a CEO, I’ve come a long way from those curly Salt Water Taffy, rolling chair, freshly roasted Mister Peanutty days that shaped my early views of the opposite sex. It’s taken a while, but I’ve curbed and politically corrected myself over the years.
Having hired many women to work at my PR firm TransMedia Group and now fully appreciating their professional talent and mental acumen particularly with computers, social and digital communications, I look at their bright faces instead of other more prominently protruding features that used to captivate me when I was a horny kid strolling the boards looking for pretty prey. Yes, I was bad. I’m sorry. Now I’m reformed.
A Spin Down Mammary Lane
As early as I can remember, growing up as a flaming heterosexual, I’ve always been fascinated by that wondrous part of a woman’s anatomy. As an adolescent, I perused them by flashlight at night in those magazines boys read under covers. I went on expeditions into darkest Africa via National Geographic, observing tribal women walking naked through jungles with baskets on their head. Later, as an Atlantic City Lifeguard, I studied thousands of them bouncing along beaches in bikinis. Still today, I sometimes have to reign in my eyes from following their shadowy trails down evening gowns at Charity Balls in the Breakers Hotel of Palm Beach or at my club, The Boca Raton Resort and Club, where they abound.
Sometimes I catch myself pondering their whereabouts under sweaters or silky chiffon blouses. Now please. I’m not being disrespectful to women, only admiring of that part of them that has stood out in my mind since I was a bad lad. And I’ve never referred to those prominent and voluptuous parts as hooters, honkers or Winnebagos. To the contrary, I’m sensitive to sexual discrimination issues in the workplace, so I avert my gaze from them. I can honestly say at times I forget they’re even around during normal business hours.
So who do you think was one of my first clients when I relocated TransMedia from Palm Beach to Boca Raton? She is one of the world’s most beautiful breast surgeons and together we probe one of her specialties, breast reduction and enlargement, with my eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.
Miss America Protest
You might say my reformation was rooted in the Miss America protest, a demonstration held at the Miss America Pageant on September 7, 1968, sometimes known as No More Miss America Day!
The “Women’s Liberation” protest inside the contest hall drew worldwide media attention and national attention to the Women’s Liberation Movement.
They did not burn their bras as was erroneously reported, but the bra burning trope that had sprung from Vietnam War protesters burning their draft cards, became a catch-phrase of the feminist era.
A lesser known protest was also organized on the same day by a civil rights activist was held at the Ritz Carlton Hotel a few blocks from the Miss America pageant where they crowned the first Miss Black America. My cousin Joann and I learned to swim in the pool at the Ritz.
And now this entry takes an unbelievable ironic twist and I’m not kidding. I’ve actually just signed as a new client a product called BraCandy, a bra and underwear concept invented by a well-endowed woman from London.
At the BraCandy Counter, you can choose one of their custom bras and then you get to pick your favorite flavor color!
The bras come in Nude, Black and White and the patented bra system lets you turn one bra into a thousand bras just by picking the cover color of your choice. You can mix and match covers, even double them up for different looks and effects.
Our publicity will show consumers how they can check out the cover options and start collecting flavors of their choice! So I’ll be exposing BraCandy. Pray for me!
P.S. Madden’s latest book “Is there enough Brady in Trump to win the inSUPERable Bowl?” is available on Amazon Enough Brady in Trump .
