Straight People Watch: Holiday Edition

Seasons greetings from a special holiday edition of Straight People Watch! And by “holiday edition” I mean the same Straight People Watch with two Christmas items thrown in. So just in case you were expecting a post chock-full of nativity scenes with the baby Jesus holding an AK-47, please redirect your focus to our regularly scheduled programming!

As any writer on the The Ellen Show could tell you, our regularly scheduled programming involves updates on the heterosexual playbook and highlights from their best players. Blow job engagement photos and tractor babies as far as the eye can see. With each addition to this series I think I’ve officially seen it all and without fail I’m proven wrong.

Let’s take a look at this round of cautionary tales.

Okay, there’s a lot to unpack (untuck) here but let me just start by saying I can’t believe UnTuckit not only exists but is thriving. What is essentially a company dedicated to Shirts, But Shorter makes it the MyPillow of the clothing industry and it somehow has a budget to produce this truly deranged commercial.

From concept to execution everything about this defies reason. The son’s “let me think about it” response to his mother’s gentle plea to come home. The girlfriend’s non-reaction to this response. That it’s shot like the Folgers’ commercial with that real illegal-in-every-state feel. The cryptic energy surrounding the father and son’s estranged status. (Did someone KILL someone??) The tucking in of the shirt that is apparently made for not tucking? The decades of resentment dissolving via a shirt’s hem.

The distance between a father and adult son involve issues so deep-seated that to try and find its roots would be an unraveling of the entire skein, but, sure, here comes UnTuckit one Christmas to blow the doors off this thing. Male intimacy is a business casual shirt.

This is the same guy who writes into Autostraddle and asks where all the men are.

When your babygirl’s at a three and you need her to be at a ten.

On the one hand, some kids do suck and their vibes are way off. On the other hand, whether or not you think you could juul with your baby shouldn’t be the guiding force in your parenting approach.

Gay people in America are close to having their right to adopt taken away, so maybe for our sakes just pop an iPad in front of your child for the next couple of decades and pretend you haven’t blacked out from having to watch them do the same dive into a pool for hours.

What amount of acres on fire will satiate the gods that straight people have upset? What debt are straight people making good on that they continue to offer our forests as sacrifice? This is about the Smirnoff icing challenge isn’t it!

The small Scrub Daddy logo just above the Scrub Mommy is somehow more devastating than the bow.

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that if the man’s wrist is bleeding that he also got bit by the snake, which would allow him to feel the pain his wife is suffering from? Or perhaps it was the cowboy snowman (?) just behind the snake that inflicted those wounds upon the husband. Which is like, Mister Police, you could of saved her! He gave you all the clues!

To everyone’s credit, something they never tell you about as a child is the metaphorical cowboy snowman ready to do the devil’s bidding in a marriage, so who, really, is to blame here? And who’s really at an advantage? The woman, dangling by one bleeding arm while a snake and various hybrid-species attack her, or the man, sans predators, securely locked into place by a boulder? Makes you think!

N’night beautiful people.

What do you get the girlfriend who has everything.

Okay, but the left side sounds like the beginning of an incredible Nancy Meyers romcom! And we all know those end with somebody who’s fallen in love with themselves drinking wine on the beach, so ultimately in the long run this is the better choice.

This is another one of those stories that requires some effort, and I understand that everyone’s families are tired so: a woman established a body weight-specific dress code for everyone in her wedding party and set their budget minimum at a cool grand. When these aggressive demands went viral, the woman railed a line of speaking to the manager and then set the date for the Polygraph Party everyone was to attend so she could find the mole. I’m scared to ask, but what is the next party going to involve?

Millennial women, let me put it to you in a way that I think you’ll understand: Snoop-dogg-holding-that-piece-of-blank-paper-and-on-it-is-the-picture-of-britney-spears-wearing-that-shirt-that-says-dump-him.jpeg

This is a part of a 36-question quiz that is supposed to be the ultimate test of a relationship. An established relationship. A relationship two people have presumably spoken to each other about. This is like those husband and wife “ice breaker” cards they sell as a fun game and not as a mutual cry for help!

Oh, so straight people just hate trees? That’s what this is about? I’ll have them know that I plan to become a tree when I die so keep this kind of stuff up and you’re looking at a lawsuit!

This picture is obviously having a little fun with the concept of straight women bleaching their entire everything in order to achieve that pubescent vibe we all legally know and adhere to, but at this point with the glitter and the steam and the vapor rub and the WASPS NESTS, would it be really be worse to turn on an actual bulb in a woman’s vagina?

This story is like the man who is being crushed by the boulder of a loving family and a mistress he willingly pursued and killed for and the woman in pain from being in pain. Quick Q: men know they can just get a divorce, right? Like, they can have a girlfriend or twenty girlfriends if they want if they just signs a piece of paper? Anyway, what are straight women up to!

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Erin

Los Angeles based writer. Let's keep it clean out there!

Erin has written 208 articles for us.

65 Comments

  1. I was at a bar on Halloween with some friends and while I was getting my drink somebody behind me went “oh nice I was just accepted to group called ‘are the straights okay?'” And I will forever regret not turning to her and saying no, no they are not. Thank you for these Erin, I love them.

    Also, no I don’t think straight men know they can just get divorced.

  2. I saw this headline and loudly called out, “Straight People Watch! Yes! Erin’s back!” My children and girlfriend may have looked at me like I was crazy, but my enthusiasm was 100% warranted. Loved this.

  3. “chock-full of naivety scenes with the baby Jesus holding an AK-47” is just such a good typo.

  4. Loving it as always, BUT, I must point out that the 36-Questions thing is supposed to be done with someone you are NOT in a relationship with, as it is (according to some dude) a way to “fall in love” with the person you’re going through it with. It’s not a test of a relationship, although I could see the use of the word “partner” giving that impression. The partner is actually just the rando that you’re doing the questions with. I went through them with a bunch of friends one time, and technically that is cheating because we already knew each other.

    But yes, it would be pretty bleak if you had to imagine being in a close friendship with one’s romantic partner!

  7. Wow these are great as always, although tbh I’m a little worried for some people. How are those polygraph-passing women going to survive in GREEN velvet sweaters and ORANGE suede pants? Will they be able to spin and lift their feet with all that jewelry weighing them down?

    • I wanna be a dude in a purple fuzzy jacket. I’m in the right weight bracket ! Just nobody snitch on me or I’ll be hosting a party of my own !

  10. I have some bad news for the person who thinks a stay at home parent gets to REST while the kids are napping like AHAH that’s very funny. Also this weird idea that taking care of children full time isn’t fucking stressful and exhausting??? I’d rather be at work, thanks!

  14. I really want a follow up on the girlfriend test guy. If she didn’t dump him straight away then she needs rescuing asap.

    Likewise for the wedding woman’s friends. “If you look like trash, so do we!” Nope, you managed that all by yourself. Just imagine how many Bad Place points she’ll get for all that!

  16. …looks up from tea, sees horizon in flames.

    “Huh. I guess lo another cis boy has been born unto the world.”

  17. But why does the scrub daddy cost more? We all know pink version = more expensive. Maybe this means there is hope after all?

    • Now that I’m thinking about it, it must be some straight-people conspiracy to make sure no one buys the scrub daddy, therefore reinforcing the strict gender roles they so desperately cling to. That’s the only way this makes sense

  20. The Bridezilla story gets even more bonkers, if you can believe it. She and her fiancé met at a “psychic’s desensitization chamber”, the clothing required for heavier people is meant to represent “the aura of the devil”, and apparently making fun of her is akin to mocking the culture and traditions of people at an Indian wedding.

    Personally I’d say bailing on the Polygraph Party sounds like a perfect excuse for getting oneself un-invited from this person’s wackadoodle shitshow wedding and hopefully also from her entire life.

  21. “UnTuckit” would much better serve as the name of a pride movement for transwomen who don’t want/can’t afford SRS.

  22. This ‘trend’ where straight women write love letters to men who are killers and in jail and end up falling in love or marrying them are so strange. I know this has been going on for a long time but it’s still so disturbing to see. I guess they really don’t believe he could one day kill them.

  23. I wanna buy a bunch of Jingle Balls and then throw a party where we smash them all with hammers.

    • I kind of thought we didn’t do the “lol penises/testicles equal masculinity, let’s destroy them” thing anymore?

      • Penises and testicles don’t (automatically) equal masculinity, but I think penis and testicle Christmas ornaments do, for sure.

  24. I was trying to find it but my tubmlr search isn’t working, but there was an update to that wedding one. She had the polygraph party and someone failed the polygraph; it was one of the bridesmaids. So, stopped being friends with her. Best part is there is at least one more leaker they weren’t able to catch, cause a $100 polygraph test from amazon(what she said she bought) isn’t going to be too good. If I can find the post again I will share the images. It’s wild.

    As for the woman working or staying home. When I was in middle school my mother went to school, even worked part time, yet had time to pick up both me and my sister and make dinner(with the help of my father of course) without being too tried. She really did it all.

  25. UNTUCKit : Finally a man’s shirt I can wear that won’t hang down below my knees. My prayers have been answered.

    Should go well with the fuzzy purple jacket and the white trainers for the Hawaiian beach wedding I’ve just been invited to. Seems there was a last-minute cancellation.

    The soda hat though… she wants the dudes to wear $1000 outfits, with two beer-cans taped to a construction hat on their heads ??

    Wut.

    • I’m pretty sure the $1000 outfit is separate from the outfit for the synchronized dance. (Also thank you for the description of a soda hat. I kept reading that being like wtf is a soda hat?)

    • I was thinking along those lines when I saw an ad of theirs that wasn’t a confusing waste of money. They could use “Short waisted people of the world rejoice!” or something based around that direction instead of what ever THAT commercial was.

      Like I took ad design as part of my unfinished degree, and granted it’s wasn’t focused on the same genre as telecommunications stuff but the organisational process of putting any advertisement into production is similar enough and jfc who had the final say so on that disaster?

      But maybe it’s like accessibility products you see on infommercials, the actual target demographic for the product is seen as unmarketable so there’s terrible ads of abled people being fucking goofy or how boner pills marketed as medicine for a “condition” didn’t sell as well as coy couple-y ads too vague for kids to understand.

      Can’t say who the shirts are REALLY for or why therefore vague, confusing or moronic commercial.
      Hmm.

  30. Truth in advertising: Scrub Mommy is dual-sided and works as a scrubber or a sponge. All Scrub Daddy does is get hard or go soft.

  32. Nothing will ever top the incest Folgers commercial, but that Untuckit commercial is a close second. Seriously wtf?

  33. My cat is literally drooling on herself right now and I still think she’d give most of these straights a run for their money in the well-adjusted department.

  34. Straight men absolutely do not know about divorce. One of my advisors in grad school murdered his wife and during the investigation their found his Google search history went from “how to tell if your wife is cheating” to “can police detect cyanide in someone’s blood”. I feel like divorce should be at least an intermediate step there….

    The Untuckit commercial is amazing and baffling. Also, every jewelry commercial around the holidays makes me worried/sad for straight women. Straight commercials are just weird all around.

  35. This series is such a gift. Every time I go home for the holidays, it feels like an extended on-the-ground segment of Straight People Watch, and let me tell you, things are bleak.

  36. Home for the holidays and having a ROUGH TIME, decided to get on Autostraddle and this article has turned my night around. Thank you Erin for your hard work in the field of straight people watch.

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