Starbucks is making the news again. Not for its commercialization and overpriced coffee, but for a few sophomoric protesters getting together to complain about the new retro coffee cups. Apparently, sirens are now too sexy for coffee and have earned the coffee monster chain the less-than-sweet name “Slutbucks.”
The original Starbucks logo, which first appeared in 1971, featured a replica of a 16th century Nordic woodcut featuring a two-tailed siren. The siren is a representation of the siren from Greek mythology. The siren was topless on the original logo, showing exposed breasts, but the logo changed in 1987, zooming in on her head only, hiding the rest of her body.
It’s funny that a coffee cup can cause so much controversy, even though it’s not featured at every Starbucks, and these cups will be available only until the end of the month to help promote the company’s new roast.
The controversy seems to be nonexistent outside of a few radicals who think the siren is topless under her hair and gives too much suggestion of breasts. If you think about it that way, then all women are, in theory, topless underneath their clothes. Should women therefore not give any suggestion that they have breasts? What are breasts anyway? They are a natural part of the female form. Big or small, all women have them, and many women use them to feed their young, just like all mammals.
Or is it the idea of breasts altogether that groups like the Resistance, an extremist Christian group in San Diego, are opposed to? Perhaps these people would rather women overall, not just mythical creatures featured on coffee cups, conceal the hint of breasts altogether and wear frocks that hide the womanly form. This thought is ridiculous, just like the notion that the mere suggestion of breasts is trying to be sexual in any way. Fortunately, we don’t live in a society that requires women to look like something other than women.
These complainers don’t stop with breasts, but actually claim that her legs are spread in a lurid sexual manner. Unless I’m forgetting fish anatomy, I don’t see how a twin-tailed creature could “spread its legs” when it doesn’t actually have legs to begin with. Maybe this group has issue with the idea of women altogether, not forgetting that the logo is of a half-fish/half-woman who does not really exist.
Perhaps the most amusing thing about the complaint is that it’s all over a coffee-cup logo. No one is making these people drink coffee there, so who cares anyway? Adults can choose to perceive something like a siren in a sexual manner if they want to, and if they’re offended, they are most likely the same people who get offended when dogs lick themselves. Some people just overact over the simplest thing. If it weren’t Starbucks’ coffee cups, it would be something else.
I am also curious about people who find this little woodblock image sexual. Honestly, guys, it’s not the most attractive image I’ve ever seen, and I couldn’t imagine someone thinking of her as an eye-catcher, let alone a sexual deviant. And, to be fair, you see more explicit things on analog television, which you didn’t have to pay $3.50 to get. It’s not like children are in Starbucks alone drinking coffee, so they’re not being exposed to something their parents couldn’t protect them from (which would be the womanly form).
If this “Resistance” group had made an educated argument, someone might have actually taken them seriously. But using comments like “Slutbucks,” and referring to a siren as having legs, makes their founder, Mark Dice, sound like a teenager coming up with a lame comeback. These people could have talked about the concern with the foundation or sources, but instead it turned into frivolous name-calling. No one can take Resistance for a legitimate group when it repeatedly makes such immature comments.
But if Resistance and others are so offended by the Starbucks logo, maybe they should give up drinking that brand of coffee. But if they’re so addicted to Starbucks coffee that they have to go, but hate its logo, it sounds more like a personal problem to me.