Seeing Pink: Taser Chic

I heard this first on NPR at the crack of dawn, but it's been on every news site and gadget blog since: Taser is marketing a pink stun gun to women. When I visited the Taser site, I saw that they are also marketing a red and a leopard print model to women. And a sporty camo model is being aimed at the discriminating gentleman.

But only the pink is being ballyhooed in the Washington Post and the New York Times, I suppose because it strikes the minds-that-be as "ironic."

At the risk of sounding like Andrea Dworkin, the joke at work here is: Pink is the natural color of orifices, not of weapons!  Weapons, are big, hard and black! Just in case you thought there was only one color stereotype being negatively referenced here, on this this slow news day.

A slow news day brought you, incidentally, by a woman and a black man who have failed to disagree substantially on much of anything, despite their respective pinkness and blackness.

In some strange way, I'm actually proud of our news media for sublimating their prurience into the Taser story.

I probably won't get a Taser yet, myself. I'm going to wait for the Apple iStun, which will be white, and will ward off attackers with bursts of loud indie-rock. After all, it's all about stopping power.