For the past 2 weeks, South Station has been completely draped with advertisements for a new flavor of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream called Flipped Out. I’m talking about total 100% advertising saturation. While taunting/tempting people into consuming a potentially ruinous junk food is peeving, it is an improvement over previous blanket marketing campaigns in South Station for soon-forgotten movies and cable television shows, for at least Ben and Jerry’s brings to mind universally happy themes, like outside-the-box product peddling, socially responsible companies, and jolly chubby hippies.
Dear Reader, you might conjecture an association about my newfound dietary restrictions and a blog post about Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Like, poor Meredith obviously can’t stop thinking about all the yummy processed foods she can’t eat! I cannot discount your sneering pity entirely, as I have been thinking about food an inordinate amount of the time in the past 10 days, but most of the time, I’m worrying about the availability of food that I can eat. Rarely am I daydreaming about the food that I cannot eat. In fact, I have yet to endure any real cravings, and my resolve is hardened on occasion by simply watching strangers eat. People with beefy backs and wobbly guts, stuffing burgers and pizza into their mouths, their jaws pumping frantically to pulverize the refined processed foodstuffs so they can swallow it and take another greedy bite. I mean, come on, life’s too short to be staring longingly at someone else’s donut and wishing those could be my carbs.
Besides, ice cream has never been a force my life. Sure, I wouldn’t kick a scoop of vanilla bean out of my dish, but I never polished off a pint of Phish Food in search of emotional solace from some crushing life blow. That’s what cigarettes, wine, and punk rock were for.
Flipped Out is high-concept ice cream, innovative in its presentation if not its flavor. The ice cream eater is supposed to “flip” the container over a dish and then squeeze the container to let the ice cream slip out. Then, the brownie is on the bottom so that it may be swollen with melted creaminess, and the fudge is on the top, magically melting into gooey syrup. But, how many Ben and Jerry’s eaters actually take the time to use a dish? Won’t most of them simply rip open the cartoon, grab a spoon and start shoveling, perhaps pausing to reflect bemusedly on the presence of hot fudge at the bottom of the container?
What really caught my eye about Flipped Out was this particular panel of advertising in South Station:
I love this little wink-wink joke, to be shared only by like-minded citizens of enlightened jurisdictions. This past weekend as I scuttled underneath New York City via subway, I walked through a station that had gotten a similar Ben and Jerry’s Flipped Out treatment, only I did not see the panel about marrying fudge, ice cream and brownies. Perhaps Ben and Jerrys did not want to seem inflammatory to the citizens of a non same-sex marriage allowin’ state, or more likely, smug.
