Does anyone actually enjoy Cathy in an unironic fashion anymore? Zuska sure doesn’t. In fact, one recent strip left her particularily irate:
Cathy is at a cosmetics counter where a saleslady or esthetician in a white lab coat points at a chart explicating some beauty product, and reads ingredients from the list to Cathy. Cathy has a stupefied expression on her face and replies “Huh?” to each mention of an ingredient or property of the product. Finally the saleslady says
By paralyzing the brain with scientific mumbo-jumbo, we reduce the muscle contractions that help create wrinkles…and TA DA! Who needs Botox?
This is evil in so many ways I can’t even begin to describe it. Women’s brains will be paralyzed by the contemplation of a list of chemical ingredients in makeup products? Because, you know, it’s all science-y and everything. But hey! It’s all good, because it prevents wrinkles! Which is all we really care about anyway!
I don’t know that it’s worth getting that upset over, but I thought I’d share anyway because, hey, she’s making fun of Cathy.
April 26th, 2007 at 9:37 am
I think that’s a really, really unfair reading of the strip, to be honest. The joke seems pretty clear to me. It’s about gullible customers being taken in by pseudo-scientific gibberish. This is a common marketing technique, so the observation is grounded in reality.
Now, sure, the strip is suggesting that cosmetics customers are a bit gullible and easily taken in by pseudoscience. And obviously, by the nature of the product, those consumers are going to be overwhelmingly female.
But it doesn’t follow that the strip is suggesting that they’re gullible BECAUSE they’re female, which is what Zuska seems to be reading into it. It just happens to be a specifically female situation.
(Mind you, none of this should be taken to suggest that I think the strip is any good.)
April 26th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
“(Mind you, none of this should be taken to suggest that I think the strip is any good.) ”
Yeah, but I’m wondering if we might end up getting to the point where people will call “Cathy” underrated.
April 29th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Nuts, Paul, I bet until your last sentence, Cathy’s editor was all set to pull your post as a blurb for the next collection.