Some things just go well together. Like peanut butter and jelly.
Butter and popcorn.
Sex… and death.
Yep. You heard me right. After seeing a “in weird news” piece today about China tryn’a stop people from hiring strippers for funeral services, I wondered – when was this ever a thing to begin with? It sounds more like a cross between a Will Ferrell movie sub-plot and something that’d be reserved for Hugh Hefner’s big sendoff (which shouldn’t be long from now). But, alas, it’s no joke. As you may know, in Asian culture “saving face” (AKA retaining family pride) is an important, integrated characteristic. How that ultimately relates to calling up Ginger and the rest of her glitter bathed buddies to gyrate around a pine box with grandpa in it, was a question I couldn’t answer though.
Until I kept reading. A few lines later, I came to learn that the reason the whole fam damily (and yes, the kids, too) were gathered around a pole humping woman like she was a campfire on a cold night had to do with – well – the same reason our culture attaches sex to things that are totally irrelevant and unrelated to sex itself:
Advertising.
Specifically, advertising for more mourners to come attend the funeral. You see, apparently over yonder, your afterlife gets validated via a point system of just how many peeps appear at your farewell party. Even if they’re strangers who spend the entirety of the ceremony poking out toddlers’ eyes with their trouser torpedo because of the entertainment. Even they count.
(Is it funnier ’cause he happens to be Asian? Or just racist? Vote below in the comments!)
Apparently, this whole “hiring professional mourners” thing is nada new – they’ve done it with other non-naked live performers for ages now. But since sex sells, it’s obviously gonna get more people in there – from the ogling media outlets and “I just came to hate…Also: I just came” folk to the legit “This is fun! Tell me about your dead loved one!” randos. And ya know what? I dig it – the whole sexy sex feet down. Because: why not? We use sex to sell everything we don’t need. Why not use it to celebrate what it creates? Life itself – and the celebration of one that was lived so fully that by the time it ended, your family gathered and said, “Clearly, the only acceptable way to acknowledge 80 bad ass years on earth – is with nude wiggling chicks.
I say let ’em put the “fun” in “funeral”.
Who says a life-cessation celebration has to be so damned solemn anyway?
“Oh sure. But when I follow up death with sex, I get called a ‘weirdo’…”