March 16, 2011, - 1:57 pm
Detroit Candy Store Sells Kids “Candy G-Strings”
Why would a candy store owner sell candy “G-string underwear” to kids? Because the almighty buck wins out over any sense of ethics. That’s what I saw, today, at a Detroit-area candy store.
Sweet Thing Candy Store Not So Sweet For Kids
I just returned from a critics’ movie screening of a flick that is Exhibit A of when I tell you that sitting through all this dreck ain’t a bed of roses. The movie, whose name I can’t give you until the day the movie debuts and I post my review, was your typical Hollywood fare: overtly anti-Christian, gratuitously violent, disgusting piece of crap. But that’s not the story here. The story is the new candy store I stopped into on the way out, what it was selling, and what the store owner told me.
The screening was in Birmingham, a swanky Detroit suburb, which is sort of like the winter version of Miami’s Coconut Grove. Expensive boutiques, fancy cars, high-priced lawyers’ offices, people who think they are supermodels, and other typical accoutrements of pretension. And on the way to my car, I popped into a new candy store, “Sweet Thing,” which I wanted to check out. I eschew almost all sugar from my diet, but every once in a while, if there is a new store and some interesting type of candy, I will make that rare exception.
As I walked around the store–which is clearly marketed toward kids, as are almost all of its items for sale–I noticed that the store had a stack of “Candy G-Strings,” thong underwear made of little candy disks a la candy necklaces. While I was paying for the gum and cinnamon breath spray I bought, I asked the woman who identified herself as the owner, “What happens when kids ask their parents to buy them candy G-strings?”
Candy Store Owner: “Well, the kids don’t really see them because they are high up.”
Actually, they are very noticeable, not high up, and have a sign pointing to them.
Candy Store Owner: “But the high school kids love them!”
Me: “Well, if you’re in high school, you probably shouldn’t be buying edible underwear.”
Candy Store Owner: “I know, but, well, I have to sell it to them. I can’t not sell it to them.”
Huh? This woman chose to offer this item for sale in a candy store marketed to kids. She doesn’t have to sell them. And since she chose to sell them, she can refuse to sell anything to anyone, so long as it isn’t based on race, ethnicity, or some other illegal classification. Selling this item at a candy store is just totally inappropriate, especially when you know this is THE venue for kids.
But don’t expect people like this–with absolutely zero ethics or sense of community–to do the right thing. They’d rather make a buck. I can’t even imagine the struggles parents encounter trying to raise decent kids these days, when unscrupulous store owners like this will sell them anything to make a dollar.
I’m all for capitalism. But this is what I mean when I write about the problems of capitalism without limits. Capitalists need to make their own limits and do the right thing. But they simply don’t anymore. It used to be that store owners wouldn’t be caught dead selling this kind of thing to kids, and if they sold it to anyone, it would be in a brown paper bag. But, now, hey, the high school kids just love it.
Here’s a tip: if a high school girl is buying a candy G-string, it isn’t for the candy, or because she doesn’t have any clean underwear available. It’s a sexual aid, plain and simple, and it’s for adults, not kids. I know it. You know it. And so does the woman who owns this candy store, who sells this sex toy. . . to anyone.
Call me uptight, a prude, or whatever, but I won’t be shopping at this store again. The stores I patronize don’t sell sex toys to kids in the guise of, “Oh, but it’s only candy.”
There’s simply nothing sweet about it.
***
On another note, I don’t expect this store to last, anyway. As an MBA holder, it’s obviously a poor business model. The candy is mostly a dollar a piece, and I don’t think there’s enough business possible to make up for the high Birmingham rent this store is paying for its prime spot.
But that’s little solace so long as the store is open and selling “eat me” underwear to kids.
Tags: Birmingham, Candy G-Strings, children, Detroit, edible underwear, kids, Michigan, sex aids, sex toys, sexual aids, Sweet Thing
I guess the candy gives new meaning to the term “sweet spot,” or maybe even the phrase “sweet thing.”
As for your comments about parents, you would be surprised how many parents of teens would have no problem with the edible g strings. No, I am not talking about the ghetto mommas. I am referring to the upper middle class white parents.
Our moral breakdown is one of the reasons the bad guys (Muslims) are winning.
Jonathan Grant on March 16, 2011 at 2:12 pm