Fake Plastic Protest

I ran across an article today that made me wish I got paid to do this. Which then of course just made me depressed me because I don’t get paid to do this. But I digress. The article, from WFTV.com in Florida details the story of a Sarasota businessman’s use of naked mannequins in his protest against the city. Yes, naked mannequins. How could I pass this up?

Apparently, David Douthitt, a man in the Gulf Coast city of Sarasota, Florida wanted to turn an empty building in town into a hair salon. More precisely, he wanted to open a Bikini Salon and Day Spa, a place of styling and spritzing operated by “a beautiful staff of ladies in designer swimwear.) However, during his attempts to get a permit for his business, the entrepreneur discovered that his neighbors simply didn’t want “that kind of business” in their neighborhood. So, to protest the denial of his permits, he has placed naked female mannequins often posed in sexual positions on display in his storefront window. Predictably, the same neighbors who didn’t want a bikini salon in their neighborhood are pretty upset at the display of semi-anatomically correct plastic nudity just across from their elementary school. What must the kids be thinking? This could cause permanent damage to their impressionable Capt’n Crunch and Pop Tart powered brains!

It may be evident from the sarcasm of the previous sentence that I don’t have much sympathy for the position of the neighbors. Whenever I hear or see the phrase “those kind of (fill in the noun of your choice)” I get suspicious. Exactly what is it that the people of Sarasota do not like? Hair salons? Or designer swimwear? I assume everyone in town gets their hair cut periodically. I also assume that being situated on the Gulf Coast, the residents have all seen their fair share of designer swimwear – and that includes their children. So what is it about the combination of beachwear and hair salons that offends so many people? Is a bikini hair salon somehow more dangerous than one where the stylists wear jeans and t-shirts? Is there some increased risk of a clipping shears/bikini strap accident? Maybe the scent of styling products mingling with the cool ocean breeze in the presence of exotic swimsuit fabrics would cause patrons to freak out and run screaming into the ocean.

People need to lighten up. Is the naked lesbian mannequin menagerie a bit too much and a little inappropriate? Perhaps. As inappropriate as fake plastic people can be. But the argument could easily be made that if Mr. Douthitt had been granted a license for his hair salon, the plastic porn protest would never had taken place. Of course, what he could have done was say nothing about what type of hair salon he wanted to run, collect his permits from the city, open his bikini salon and sue the pants off the city (sorry, I couldn't resist) when they tried to shut him down. But he shouldn’t have to go through all that to open and operate a perfectly legitimate business. Recently several drive-thru coffee shops in Seattle have allowed their employees to wear bikinis to work. Guess what. Business is booming, the sky hasn’t fallen, and the rate of rear end collisions between cars in the drive-thru line is holding steady. Allowing “a beautiful staff of ladies in designer swimwear” to style hair in a beachfront resort town will not increase the rate of pre-teen mohawks or triple the urge to shampoo, rinse and repeat. The only thing the paranoid people of sunny Sarasota will notice will be a few more aging overweight vacationing Canadians wandering in off the beach to get a haircut. Now, if you object to aging overweight vacationing Canadians, that’s a whole other issue.