The Program

OK, I'm going to do this review of Playboy: Women of Wal-Mart by discussing two rather disparate points, and ultimately attempting to tie them together in some kind of thesis. Bear with me.

The first one, of all things, is Taco Bell. The franchise. The fast-food franchise. The pseudo-Mexican-food-serving fast-food franchise. Now, think of what happens when you bring up the topic of Taco Bell every time you are with a reasonably sized cross-sample of friends, family, or co-workers. Everybody - and I mean everybody - immediately starts making gagging and retching noises. The filth! The degradation! Why that's not food, that's garbage. You might as well take it home and toss it in the toilet, thus completely eliminating the middle-man entirely. Vile! Venemous! Garbage! Disgusting, who would ever eat that?

The answer, of course, is every last one of them. Every last one. Because when it comes right down to it, Taco Bell ain't all that bad. In fact, we know its crap, but its crap that at least tastes half-decent. We like it. We love it. We gag and bitch and moan whenever somebody even dares to mention its name, but damned if we ain't cramming that last caramel apple empanada down our gullets.

Wal-Mart is like Taco Bell in that regard. Certainly the fact that Wal-Mart is single-handedly the largest retail outlet in the country is a testimonial to the fact that people - no matter how much they complain - are continuously shopping there. Oh sure, we complain about Wal-Mart. "They're polluting the landscape." "They're ruining Mom and Pop stores all over small-town America." "They're eliminating full-time jobs and cutting benefits and salaries while forcing an entire generation of Americans to find menial work doing part-time, minimum-wage drudgery." All of which may be true, and may be legitimate points. But let's face it. You're in a hurry and you need to pick up three wastepaper baskets, a laundry hamper, two elongated halogen bulbs for your bathroom, four pairs of cheap bathing suits, a package of DVD-ROMs and checkered bedskirt. You know where you'll end up: at the familiar blue awning with the yellow smiley guy and the kindly faced, elderly greeter.

Sad but true. I loathe Wal-Mart, but if I need to go there I might just have to grit my teeth and "roll back" my indignation.

Now on to my second point: beautiful women. Desirable women. The women who turn unsuspecting men into Tex Avery cartoons, howling like wolves and dropping their jaws and beating themselves on the head with a giant mallet at the sight of them. You got your movie starlets, your models, your underage pop singing sensations, etc., but I think to many guys the sexiest women on the planet are those whose features and demeanors represent a cross section of their own reality: the friendly girl running the reception desk in their office building, the sultry woman behind the counter at the laundromat, the Rubenesque coworker the accounting department with the shy smile, completely unaware of how singularly hot she is. And so on and so forth.

The common label attached to these women is "the girl next door." It's a solidly apropos label. And when it explains why, given the choice, most men go for Mary Ann over Ginger. It's the promise of beauty with familiarity and substance, as opposed to beauty with distance and artificiality.

(I've always been more of a Ginger guy, but I've always had a thing for redheads...)

So Playboy decided to exploit this concept by conducting a nationwide search for Wal-Mart employees and have them pose, utterly desnudo, for their magazine. Six of these young ladies are featured on the Playboy: Women of Wal-Mart DVD: Beth, a Customer Service rep from Colorado Springs, Tesha, a photo technician from Lancaster, California, Deborah, and Overnight Stocker from Bozeman, Montana, Katie, a Department Manager from Bridgeview, Illinois, Tiffany, from the Grocery Department in Spring Hill, Florida, Kristi, a Sales Associate from Sterling, Illinois, and Suzan, a Cashier from Hamburg, New York. Each of the women is definitely attractive, not the stunning air-brushed beauties you've come to expect from Playboy, but each quite nice and enjoyable to observe. They talk about their jobs, their reactions to posing for Playboy, and their personal philosophies about working at Wal-Mart and stripping off all of their clothes. We see their various photo-shoots, with some interviews with the photographers, make-up people, and so forth as they discuss how they go about shooting these "girl next door" types. There is gratuitous nudity and full-frontal close-up shots, so for those who just want to see "boobies and stuff", you'll be pleased, I guess.

The DVD

Video:

Playboy: Women of Wal-mart is presented in a full-frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The overall quality of the video is quite good, if not exactly earth-shattering. This program was mostly taped on location, so some scenes seem a little softer than others, contrast levels vary from sharp to muted, and colors are adequately represented. The presentation isn't very long, so the transfer seems mostly solid, with a tad bit of noise here and there but nothing excessively detrimental

Audio: