"And another thing about why I hate Archie comics . . ."

Even with my recent decision to keep drinking but stop getting drunk, I can't stop myself from speaking out against Archie comics.* Like a lot of women my age, I read Archies when I was young. For about a day I thought they were pretty rad. A friend of mine remembers the first instance that she realized she could read all by herself was with an Archie comic. My first understanding of negative gender stereotypes was within the 2-dimensional borders of Riverdale. A little later on I thought, in retrospect, that people like Jughead just like to be alone and no one should force hot cartoon women on him if that's what he hates so much . . .

Mocking Archies and the people who read them is like Republicans speaking out against pornography: In order to have an opinion, they have to admit to looking at it at least once. Last night I ranted about how, in the one I read, Archie's dad came in and said, "son, I think it's time you did more with your summer than sit at the beach all day looking at girls . . ." and so forth. And Archie--who never handed in an essay that that loser Betty** didn't write for him--decides to start a bloody magazine.

And he just does it! He calls up a friend of his dad's and it just happens. By the end of the summer he's a celebrity editor. At one point he says something like, "gee I never realized it was all such hard work!" Thanks Archie. The magazine thing was the only thing that seemed realistic to me. And now you're holding it hostage in Riverdale. I feel that much dirtier now.

Notes on the above:
*speaking out: every so often I return to the theme that I'm not very good at articulating opinions on matters important to Canadians. If only I could discuss politics (Canadian and American and foreign) and economics and oppression with the same gumption that I use for Archie comics, misleading food photography, and the use of gelatin to set a good mousse.

**that loser Betty: she once made a joke about a cake shaped like a rollerskate that went like this: "it's the wheel thing!"