Baseball is Back – But We’re Watching Them Hooters in Front

Ah, spring is in the air as Major League Baseball’s spring training camps are in full swing, and opening days around the league are edging ever closer. Doesn’t hurt that today marks the first official day of Spring too.

But there may be more this baseball season attracting fans to the game than the crack of the bat, if spring training is any indication – sex.

Yes – sex in baseball.

Not in the stands, though I’ve often wondered about those sitting in the nose-bleed section – on the field!

In many ballparks across the league, the lanky skinny teenage ball boys have been replaced with hot Hooters waitresses, wearing tight, revealing outfits.

They are still responsible for catching balls out of play, though many watching are more captivated by their excessive cleavage than whether or not they can use the glove they are sporting.

And someone forgot to tell baseball’s latest eye candy how to play the game. There have already been a couple of incidents where Hooters girls have interfered with a ball in play.

If a traditional ball boy did that, he’d be ejected from the game, possibly fired. After a jiggle or two, and a deep sigh, maybe a pout, the umpire just laughs, smiles and waves it off, as the jumbo screen replays the jiggle and bouncing girl in slo-mo.

It’s no secret that sex sells. Advertisers have been luring us in with pretty faces – and more – for as long as we’ve all had hormones.

And sex in sport isn’t new either, just think about those late night boxing matches with the ring girls, or the hot chicks in skin-tight outfits accompanying winning Indy Car drivers.

What is new, is placing the sex objects right in the action, where they can influence the outcome of a major sporting event.

If the Hooter’s girl hadn’t caught those balls, then the batter might have been out – instead of getting another shot at getting on base, or driving home a run.

Baseball is going to be an interesting sport this season.

Toronto Wanna-Be Mayor Cries Wolf

Last week, International Women’s Day was tarnished by the brash sexually abuse accusations fired at a big city mayor by a woman he defeated in the last election campaign.

Sarah Thomson, claimed that Canada’s largest city mayor,Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, made lewd sexual slurs while grabbing her butt at a political function.

Thomson, who ran against Toronto’s Mayor and lost, didn’t follow the usual course of action by a victim of sexual assault and report it to police. Instead, she blasted Mayor Rob Ford publicly on social media, posting a picture of her smiling, alongside the accused on Facebook.

Mayor Ford denied Thomson’s whole story, claiming none of this happened, and that she was crying wolf.

Numerous people at the event, even those not traditionally supporting the controversial Toronto mayor have spoke out against Thomson, claiming they clearly saw that none of what she was claiming happened.

A handful of local politicians are even coming forward, saying they overheard Thomson talking about intentionally setting up Mayor Rob Ford, to further her own political aspirations.

Thomson claims if anything, publicly talking about this would hurt her political career, as she’ll be known as the “ass grab” politician.

Sarah Thomson – formerly Sarah Whatmough – unsuccessfully ran for a municipal council seat in her native city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1997. She then launched a monthly newspaper called the Hamilton Examiner in 1998, which shortly ceased publication. Since then, she moved to Toronto, ran unsuccessfully against Rob Ford, and failed again in politics, when she ran locally for the Provincial Liberal Party in 2011.

Her bold and potentially criminal charges – despite her lack of filing a police report – was the first time in a long time the 45-year-old Thomson had been in the public eye, with just about every news organization in the city clamouring for an interview.

Allegations of sexual abuse are traditionally he said, she said debates, hammered out in a court of law. And make no mistake, sexual assault is one of the most distasteful and disruptive of crimes one person can commit against another. 

Victims of sex abuse often endure years of therapy, as they overcome the horrible events of their past. Some never fully recover.

However, Thomson is acting more like a person with a mission, than victim, as of this writing, she still hasn’t filed a police report, laid criminal charges, or sought any of the traditional sources for assistance and recovery from sexual abuse which one would normally take in such matters.

All Sarah Thomson has done, is as Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has said, is cry wolf.

If what Thomson is claiming is true, than the mayor of Canada’s largest city should be held fully accountable for his actions.

If on the other hand, Thomson is just crying wolf to rally for her personal gain, not only should she be held fully accountable for her actions – which she will because no one will believe or trust her ever again – but she should also meet with and learn from actual victims of sexual abuse.

Because those who’ve been harmed sexually often have the longest road of recovery. And perhaps, if she learns from those who’ve got more than a Facebook page with unsupported allegations to cry wolf from, she’ll realize just how devastating sexual assault is on those who’ve actually been assaulted in this manner.

And that will make her – slightly – a better person, even if she just cried wolf.

A Night Out with Hookers?

I love a nice night out with friends. Usually we go out to a fine dinning restaurant, because you can’t have a nice night out with friends without great food.

Maybe as I get older, I've lost touch with young people, as kids these days are showing a lot more skin than we ever did when I was a kid.

Wait a sec . . . why are parents letting their kids dress like hookers?

There seems to be a trend with teen – and what appears in some cases pre-teen – girls to dress in exceptionally short tight skirts, with low necklines, working in fine dinning establishments as hostesses.

Though you’d swear from their outfits they were women of the night, waiting for their ‘Johns.’

I understand in many sports bars the waitresses often wear outfits which show off their – ahem – assets – because the mostly male clientele tip higher if they think the pretty girls are flirting with them.

But at a fine dinning restaurant, where men, women and families go for a pleasant night out, that’s not cool.

What’s worse, is these kids are just that – kids. They don’t know any better – my hunch is their managers are advising them – or telling them – to show some skin.

What kind of sicko tells a pre-teen girl it’s okay to dress like a whore in a family restaurant? What kind of message are we telling kids today?

Sex sells – but sexualizing children – and that’s what they are – is wrong.

When the health and safety inspectors go into these places, they shouldn’t just  write up restaurants for unhealthy conditions, they should be able to shut a place down that is exploiting our youth.

Because in the end, that’s what these fine dinning restaurants are doing – exploiting young girls.

It isn’t right that these kids are being paraded about like street walkers.

There are restaurants – like Hooters – where the wait staff intentionally dress revealing. But from my understanding, they have to be at least 21 years old, and they choose to work at that restaurant, knowing the dress code, and all that goes with that dress code.

Pre-teen girls don’t know what wearing such skimpy outfits really says in our highly sexualized society. They don’t understand that when people are eyeing them up and down, it isn't because they are cute kids, but because they are dressed like sluts.

These high-end eating establishments are selling sex, off the backs of children that don’t know any better.

It’s almost like pimping out your own daughter, only there isn’t any sex act involved. You can look but you can’t touch.

Yet.

Wait until she’s legal.

Wait . . .. that’s just sick.

Who’s The Most Beautiful Canadian?

Shania Twain, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams are among Hello! Canada magazine's most beautiful Canadians.

Sadly, I wasn’t on the list. I suppose white men with beer-belly guts and rising hairlines just don’t cut it.

Though Justin Bieber and Ryan Reynolds made the list.

You know you’re not going to qualify for a beauty list, when you’re competing against people who haven’t fully gone through puberty yet.

But what makes a beautiful Canadian – or beautiful person – well – beautiful?

A while back, marketing giants Ogilvy& Mather created the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, which featured anything but the traditional supermodels to market women’s skin care products. Average looking women were used, to show where real beauty comes from.

One billboard in the series asked viewers to phone a toll-free number to vote on whether a woman on the billboard was "fat" or "fab". The results were posted real-time on the board. The percentage of "fat" votes overtook "fab", leading to the creation of the Dove Self-Esteem Fund that claims to change the Western concept of beauty from ultra-thin models with "perfect" features to making every woman feel positive about her looks.

Dove produced a series of online short films promoting the self-esteem fund.

Unilever, the company which owns the Dove brand, has been criticized on the grounds that Unilever also produces Fair and Lovely, a skin-lightening product marketed at dark-skinned women in several countries. Unilever also markets the Lynx's brand, which contradicts the sentiment of the Campaign for Real Beauty, by using traditional hot models in the advertising.

Unilever also owns and is responsible for the branding of their AXE brand of deodorants and body sprays, which uses hot chicks in skimpy outfits craving ordinary looking men after they apply the AXE product.

So we’re back asking the question – where does real beauty come from?

Unilever tried to show us our inner beauty, and that we’re all beautiful in some way, but eventually went back to the old tried and true standard of using fashion models.

Beauty comes from within – or does it?

 As a species, we are naturally attracted to others visually first. This goes back to our basic instincts – men look for women with full lips and hips, good teeth, hair, skin and nails, as a sign of someone who’s healthy and fit to produce off-spring. Tall dark and handsome also has some truth – it’s a sign to women that the guy is fit and will have good genes, and that the man can defend the cave (remember we’re talking basic instincts here) to protect the family.

Even our pheromones have been linked to our health – muscular, men smell better to women, according to more than a few studies. When compared to overweight men, socks worn by the fit men seemed less “stinky” than the unfit men to women who volunteered to participate in one study.

However, in today’s complex society, obviously there is more at play than how one smells. We all want to be surrounded by people that make us feel good.

No one wants to hang out with the neighborhood bully, or be forced to endure a night alone with someone that bores the hell out of them.

So true beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, as it depends on what each one of us needs in another to be happy and comfortable.

Maybe that’s true love really is blind?