Soap Box

Today I drove a girlfriend to Gig Harbor to pick up a car; it wasn't until we hit Fife that I thought to visit my in-laws in Belfair, about 45 minutes east of Tacoma. On the way to Belfair there are a few roadside coffee stands that I always want to try but never do because I'm usually with Ryan who loathes coffee and extra stops on the way home so today was the perfect day for an extra stop.

Driving down Highway 2 through the middle of Belfair I saw the new drive through Starbucks on my right and thought that would be a decent option but ended up deciding against it because I have had Starbucks many a time and I wanted to support the little guy, the small business. Then I saw the coffee stand kitty corner to Starbucks and pulled in the queue. There was a green pick up in front of me and on the other side of the hut was another vehicle. Great, I thought, with business like this their coffee must be above the level of swill so I was eager to see what their brew was like.

After just a few moments a coffee cup was extended out the window to the driver of the green truck and he went on his merry little way. My turn! I pulled up knowing that the barista would be helping the person on the other side of the hut but I could at least look at the menu and see what they had to offer.

My eyes never made it to the menu. I looked inside the hut and the sight greeting my eyes confused me. The visual was so real but it was just so out of place that my brain had a hard time reconciling what I was seeing to reality. The coffee hut and the barista in the hut didn't go together.

You can imagine what ran through my mind when I saw the barista's uniform was not a t-shirt or polo with the compulsory black apron but a bra. Yep. A bra. An off-white, pristine, embroidered bra. I sat there, stunned and stared at her. Then I collected myself and drove to Starbucks.

There has been much to do in the smaller outlying areas about the bikini clad baristas, some stands going so far as to go topless with just pasties to cover their nipples. I understand that the barista gets better tips when she is dressed more provocatively and even better when wearing a bikini top and even better when wearing a bra and even better when wearing pasties and I bet they would be out of this world without the pasties. Why not call a spade a spade and go strip for money? What's the difference? Is it more respectable to stand in a hut in the middle of the day and make coffee half naked for money versus dancing half naked for money?

In the past I've commented on the belief that Americans are puritanical in their views related to nudity. Yeah, we are a bit prudish when it comes to nudity relatively speaking (uptight by European standards but loose by standards set by Muslim people). Maybe we wouldn't be so uptight about nudity if what was portrayed in the media was de-sexualized. I don't think many people have a problem with seeing the naked human form when it is depicted in non-sexual ways and when a 'real' body is shown. Hugh Hefner can talk all he wants about how natural and beautiful the girls in Playboy are but we all know they are not real. Nothing about them is real. Not their platinum blond hair, their ginormous boobs or their airbrushed skin. Would Playboy have been as great a seller if they showed the average American woman, a little over weight, normal hair and skin? What if the women weren't in provocative poses? What if they showed a dumpy naked man? Oh, wait I forgot, if we are puritanical about the naked female we are over the moon about a naked man. God forbid someone should see a penis.

I have family who are in love with the idyllic notion of Smalltown America. It is a place where people whistle the tune to the Andy Griffith show and men tip their hats at the ladies and the ladies bake bread and cookies for new neighbors and everyone goes to the little white washed church on Sunday. I wonder what this family member would think of the naked barista in the very small town of Belfair.