An open letter to FAIRWAY management regarding your tasteless, puerile, "Juicy Melons" advert

Dear Fairway Management,

Clearly you have issues with managing your company. After all, you recently had to go through Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, which signals to me that you don't always make the smartest choices.

But for a company trying to emerge from Chapter 11 to send out a sexist advertisement to WOMEN? What the heck are you thinking? I'm not going to post the advert here, because I don't want to give you the viral publicity you were apparently craving. Instead, I'm going to tell you this:

1) I unsubscribed from your email list.
2) I'm informing you that I'm not shopping at any of your stores until you issue an apology to me, my daughter, and to every woman who had to be subjected to that ridiculousness in the year 2016.

But here's the most important part. I'm letting you know just how much money I've spent with your company since you opened in Stamford in October 2010, so you know how much this ridiculous mishegas is costing you:

2010 $1474.44 Store opened in October
2011 $3495.41
2012 $4890.49
2013 $4849.39 includes $559.61 from Fairway Catering for Dad’s shiva
2014 $3965.85
2015 $3799.12 includes $287.15 from Fairway Catering for Mom's shiva
2016 $2088.93

Total $24,563.61


You see, Senior Fairway Management, I know all this because despite having a pair of "juicy melons" attached to my body, I have an MBA in Finance, I own my own house, invest in a financial portfolio, decide what car I'm going to buy, and make many other decisions about my life. I've achieved the success I have in my life while fighting exactly the kind of stupidity, sexism, and discrimination that ridiculous, puerile ad represents on Wall St, in publishing, in agriculture, in journalism, dealing with auto mechanics, dealing with plumbers, dealing with banks, and I never in a million years thought that by the time my daughter would be a few years from entering the workforce, she would STILL being facing this kind of crap.

So I've learned to put my money where my mouth is. When my investment broker disagreed with an instruction I gave him and told me "Ask your father" (even though my father had Alzheimer's at the time and, let me reiterate, I have an MBA in Finance and had worked as a financial analyst) I moved my investments to another firm. And that is what I am doing now.

Firms like yours need to learn that SEXISM DOESN'T PAY. It costs you money.

I hope for your sake all the bros and sexist idiots that liked that ad make up for the dollars you will lose from pissed-off intelligent, fed-up women like myself.

UPDATE: I decided to update with an image of the ad that was retweeted by Fairway Corporate Twitter referencing that women were upset with this ad and making light of it, with a totally disgusting hashtag:



For all of you at home who might not be aware of the more sordid meaning of the reference, allow me to make your stomach turn:



Again I ask: What sentient being in 2016 would think this is a good marketing strategy - particularly for a SUPERMARKET?

The "Malignant Hazard of Privilege"

On the recommendation of my friend Lee Strasburger I'm reading MEMOIRS OF AN ANTI-SEMITE by Gregor Von Rezzori

I haven't even reached Von Rezzori's writing yet, because I've been thinking so much about one of the last paragraphs in Deborah Eisenberg's introduction:

"How many actually evil people does it take to accomplish a genocide and reduce much of a continent to ash? Only a handful, it seems, but that handful requires the passive assistance of many, many other people who glance out of the windows of their secure homes and see a cloudless sky. It's easy enough for most of us to distance ourselves from attitudes of virulent racism, but what about from carelessness, casual snobbery - either social or intellectual - inattentiveness? Rezzori reminds us painfully that the great and malignant hazard of privilege is obtuseness."
...
"Yes, we wonder, what does it take to be a "decent person"? Maybe the most significant component is luck - the good luck to be born into a place and moment that inflicts minimal cruelty and thus does not require from us the courage to discern and resist its tides."

As another politician, one who has a phD in history says things like this:

and politicians and "nice" people in my extremely privileged town behave like this and people fight over which lives matter in more in slogans (seriously Mike Huckabee? I thought this was the Onion, not the Hill) instead of confronting the real structural inequities that exist in our country, Eisenberg's words resonate.

Last December, I wrote an op-ed entitled: Now is the time for moral courage: Politicians can't be bystanders to hate speech. Sadly, moral courage appears to be in short supply. Is it due to the malignant hazard of privilege?

Now more than ever: DON'T ASSUME ANYTHING

The last 48 hours in our country have been heartbreaking. And frightening. And then infuriating, as people with preconceived notions start making assumptions based on no information and making public statements threatening the life of our President, (looking at you, Rep Joe Walsh)

and staking claim to their sides. Black Lives Matter. Blue Lives Matter. I can believe that Blue Lives matter while simultaneously recognizing that there are grave injustices in our legal system and that there are many, many documented instances where the police have behaved unethically, and innocent black men and women have lost their lives without justice being served.

In our country, "justice" is for white people with the funds to buy it. That's something I learned in my late teens. Lady Justice isn't blind, the way she is portrayed on the courthouse steps. That's the ideal, but sadly, it isn't the reality in our country.

We are at a particularly dangerous time right now. Trust in government institutions is at low ebb. Election rhetoric has divided the country even more.

Now maybe it's because of my upbringing, where I was taught to look at everything from the outside, and very, very critically, but if I were a foreign government looking to destabilize the US even further, getting snipers to fire at police during a Black Lives Matter protest would be the perfect way to achieve that. I mean, look at what's happening this morning. More division. Dallas was on lockdown earlier this morning. It would be a propaganda win for a foreign power.

Has our government has ever taken measures to destabilize other countries? Of course we have.

It could be anyone. Don't assume anything. Remember, assume makes an Ass out of U and Me.