The 1975 Sears Catalogue
The Wardrobe Malfunction issue...
“Oh sacred head now wounded / with grief and shame weighed down”
-“Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded”, from the Lutheran Hymnal #172
“What happened to Janet Jackson pales in comparison.”
-unknown pundit
* Warning: this post might make some people uncomfortable as it deals with adult themes.
As the holiday gift giving season comes around yet again, I am reminded of the epic Sears and Roebuck’s annual mail-in catalogue that would arrive when we were kids on that auspicious, unknown day in August or September. It was as if God had handed us the keys to Fort Knox for it was pure gold. Human life has changed monumentally over the past several decades so I understand this post might come across as if it were written by someone who remembers the day when electricity was discovered or who grew up in a cave with a monobrow, a huge forehead and a pet lizard named Gary had language existed. For you little snotty nosed youngsters out there full of agist judgement, let me remind you that we were the first generation who literally held the power of an Elton John “Captain Fantastic” pinball machine in the palm of our hands, a piece of brown plastic the size of a gold brick that contained a chip which would eventually evolve to help you plagiarize papers and avoid research that requires more than 5 seconds of your precious time. So some thanks might be in order for our sacrifice.
Weighing in at around 1500 pages, the 1975 catalogue was a monster that could’ve performed a pile driver on War and Peace, Moby Dick and Infinite Jest combined in a Sunday afternoon World Wrestling Federation grudge match. The plot was surreal, encompassing nearly every aspect of modern living and the Sears advertising department insisted on hiring third rate models to sell it all. As Christmas approached, we would annoyingly give our parents hints by circling pages and products, things like the flame resistant Green Bay Packers robe or a pair of roller skates or Lester, the black ventriloquist doll. We could’ve earmarked a gun which required no background check. Thank God some things haven’t changed. There was no way we would ever have had a gun in our household but how wonderful it was to know that for a few bucks, the option was at our fingertips. Out of the kindness of our undeveloped hearts, we felt as though we were doing our parents a huge favor by helping them understand our wants and needs, assuring that they didn’t have to waste their valuable time searching for that perfect holiday gift which would bring eternal happiness to us, their non paying housemates, the ones they were probably questioning why they had given birth to in the first place.
So this is where it gets uncomfortable. In 1975, just as the Vietnam War was winding down, the Sears Catalogue slipped up. Who knows how this happened but the proof is in the pudding and the pudding was on page 602. There was a model, a fine looking lad by many standards, who could’ve easily have scored a support role on Barnaby Jones who found his fame deep inside the catacombs of the catalogue. Turns out he was endowed enough to have his own page in the history of the modern world. From Decorah, Iowa to Aberdeen, Washington to Christmas, Florida, kids dreaming of a set of AM/FM monaural headphones were instead introduced to Moby Dick. Modeling permanent pressed boxer shorts, this hunk of a man appeared to have taken the shoot so seriously that he exposed everything for his art, like a star student of Lee Strasberg. It generated so much uncomfortable permanent press in this puritanical nation that The Kansas City Times went to all the trouble of printing a ridiculous X Ray silhouetted version of the photo as to hide the evidence along with an article explaining what all the fuss was about despite the original image having the quality of bad stock footage from Roswell or Loch Ness.
As an 8 year old, it was big news and I can attest that even in Decorah, the discovery was on par with Farrah Fawcett’s blonde curls supposedly spelling out “SEX” on her iconic swimsuit poster which was achieved primarily by squinting and suspending disbelief. The Sears PR wing immediately declared DEFCON 5 and issued these statements:
Ernest Arms, a PR director for Sears, told reporters, "It's just a printing flaw. These spots just happen. It's just that it was in an unfortunate spot."
Judy Aycock, another PR rep, elaborated: "The subject in question is actually a flaw which happened by water, grease or dirt being on the plate. It didn't pick up ink. The same art work was used in the spring general catalogue and no one suggested it should be in Playgirl instead of the mail order catalogue."
Water, grease or dirt. Are you serious Judy? One thing that we would learn during the justification of the second Iraq War is that you can’t always trust statements from a PR team that’s getting paid the big bucks. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found then yet it seems extremely plausible that there was a short range missile, possibly out of commission, hiding in plain sight on page 602. To this day, the model’s identity has been kept secret which makes it even more dubiously fantastic. In my imagination, he was whisked away and enrolled in the FBI witness protection program then relocated to the Phoenix area where he ran a lawn care business, fell in love with a secretary, raised two kids and had a chihuahua named Gary. The catalogue sold a lot of fishing gear, boats, outboard motors, floatation devices, etc., but holy hymnal if that guy on 602 wasn’t selling his tackle as a side hustle. Zoot Fenster even wrote a very questionable song about it that we can only trust inspired the likes of Ween or “Weird Al” Yankovic.
And we wonder why aliens don’t appear to be all that interested in homo sapiens.
Stay artful…
Do we know the impact that the incident had on the model’s life post-catalog?