Arnold Zwicky's Blog

(Men’s underwear, but nothing hard-core.)

The Daily Jocks ad from the 9th, featuring the Marco Marco brand, with my caption:

(#1)

Maximum Marco in boxer briefs.
Middle Marco in briefs.
Minimal Marco in almost nothing,
Beyond the pecs, the abs, and the thighs,
Nothing like one another, but they’re
Totally tight —
All three for Subcomandante Marcos, the
Subcomandante for all of them.

Four things here: the Marco Marco firm, which is trés gai; the play on All for one and one for all (most famously alluding to the motto of the Three Musketeers)); the play on Marcos the plural of the personal name Marco vs. the surname Marcos; and the reference to the Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos. Plus a whiff of an allusion to Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Marco Midi is just right). And of course the differences in the three men’s body types.

Marco Marco. A 3/3/17 posting has a section on the Marco brand and L.A. designer Marco Morante (who designs over-the-top stuff for women, drag queens, hot gay men, whatever), where I noted, cautiously, that “Many of his underwear models read as gay”.

One all, all one. Or the reverse. And, yes, a Swiss connection! (Swissies are everywhere.) From Wikipedia:

Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno is a [chiastic] Latin phrase that means “One for all, all for one” in English.

… Switzerland [which is a federation] has no official motto defined in its constitution or legislative documents. The phrase, in its German (Einer für alle, alle für einen), French (un pour tous, tous pour un), Italian (Uno per tutti, tutti per uno) and Romansh (In per tuts, tuts per in) versions, came into widespread use in the 19th century.

… One for all, and all for one (Un pour tous, tous pour un; also inverted to All for one, and one for all) is a motto traditionally associated with the titular heroes of the novel The Three Musketeers written by Alexandre Dumas père, first published in 1844.

The three Marcos probably aren’t Swiss, but they are presented as a trio,

The Zapata connection.Instead of going to Marco Polo, I decided to go for someone a bit rougher (ok, and more obscure, at least to most Americans). From Wikipedia:

(#2)

Subcomandante Marcos was the nom de guerre used by Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente (born June 19, 1957) who was the leader and primary spokesman of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) during the Chiapas conflict. Marcos has used several other pseudonyms; he referred to himself as Delegate Zero during the 2006 Mexican Presidential Campaign, and in May 2014 announced that Subcommandante Marcos “no longer exists,” adopting the name Subcomandante Galeano instead.

Born in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Marcos earned a degree in sociology and a master’s degree in philosophy from National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and taught at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) for several years during the early 1980s. During these years, he became increasingly involved with a guerrilla group known as the National Liberation Forces (FLN), before leaving the university and moving to Chiapas in 1984.

The EZLN was founded in the Lacandon Jungle in 1983, initially functioning as a self-defense unit that was dedicated to protecting Chiapas’ Mayan people from evictions and encroachment on their land. While not Mayan himself, Marcos emerged as the groups leader, and when the EZLN – often referred to as Zapatistas – began their rebellion in January 1, 1994, Marcos served as the Zapatistas’ spokesman.

Known for his trademark ski mask and pipe, and for his charismatic personality, Marcos led the EZLN during the 1994 revolt and the subsequent peace negotiations, during a counter-offensive by the Mexican Army in 1995, and throughout the decades that followed.

Body types and personas. Using several models in a single ad is a way to appeal to a wide variety of potential customers: each customer wants to be that guy in the ad, and he want to do that guy, and he’s also got his own tastes in men. So the company supplies its own brand of guy in almost all of its models — for Marco Marco, the guys have those pecs, amazing abs, sturdy thighs — but then each model is as distinct from the others as possible. Marco Maxi is compact and lean, “ethnic”, with black hair, a mustache, and a light beard; the others are clean-shaven and have blond to brown hair, with bigger bodies than Maxi.

But Midi and Mini have very different hair styles, and very different torsos, though they’re about the same height: Mini has an extraordinarily long torso (from the shoulders to the hipbones), much longer than Midi’s. And Mini has a bunch of tattoos and wears glasses.

A type for them all, each one a type of his own.

This entry was posted on May 19, 2017 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Captions, Chiasmus, Figurative language, Formulaic language, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language play, Underwear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.