Winkers: Restoring Pride To The Wide

By Akela Talamasca on August 21st, 2009

winkers I love my friends. They make sure that no aspect of human endeavor, no matter how small, goes unnoticed. If I haven’t seen the latest meme of some small animal doing something only humans do, it’s guaranteed that it will be sent to me within a couple of days — sometimes even hours. So it was with blissful ignorance that I clicked the link that took me to the YouTube video for “Winkers”.

Now, I’m not terribly fashion-savvy. I’m not metrosexual. I couldn’t tell you which trendy styles were invented in America, nor do i care. But I’m pretty damned sure that only an American could have invented “Winkers.”

If you’re smart enough not to have already clicked on that link, let me explain what “Winkers” are: Imagine that your scuzzy, dope-dealing artist friend with the goatee (you know who I’m talking about) was sitting around stoned one day with his paints out. He looks around, sees the cover of the latest Vogue (don’t ask) with its full-facial model staring straight at him. Then he looks over at the pair of discarded jeans he hastily doffed last night for a bout of uninspiring in-exchange-for-weed sex with that girl who works at the Starbuck’s down the street. He gets a sudden flash of inspiration and paints two large eyes on either rear pocket, giggles about it for three minutes, then passes out.

An hour later, walking down the street in the same jeans, he’s puzzled by the way people keep looking at him, pointing and laughing, until a “friend” of his mentions that, brah, when seen from behind, it looks like those eyes are winking!

And if that isn’t the genesis of this … product, then I don’t want to know, because my version of the story at least leaves me with the satisfaction of thinking that it was accidental. If you haven’t seen the “commercial” yet, then please go watch it now and marvel at home-made, Yankee ingenuity.

I have so many questions: if you don’t got ’nuff back, do the eyes do anything at all? Could Mad Magazine get in on this and start putting their famous inner cover fold-ins on jeans? Are these being mass-produced? Will it now become acceptable to openly stare at people’s asses? Am I going insane? So many questions.