ZCMI - Nipples Be Gone
If you are Mormon or live in the Intermountain West, you know about ZCMI. Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution. Founded in 1868, it claimed to be the United State’s first department store. This cooperative had a variety of locations until it was centralized in downtown Salt Lake City in 1870. It was started and owned by the Mormon church until it sold ZCMI to The May Company in 1999.
I worked in the advertising department in the mid and late 80s in the “service center,” the corporate office building. This was the warehouse, where all of the merchandise buyers were located, accounting, CEO, etc. The center of it all. When the human resources head would give tours of the building to new employees, she would skip advertising. She was afraid. Most of us were not Mormon, and we had a coffee maker in the back of the room. The receptionist was growing pot in the planter next to her desk in the front office.
Advertising had a “sister”department, “display.” That was the department that made all the stores look great, and made those award-winning Christmas windows facing Main Street. Everybody in the display department was gay. Well, okay, 89% of them were gay. I was the only lesbian in advertising, except for the one who made if for two months before she was fired. I only slept with her once.
Owned by the Mormon church, customers would report any seeming wrong-doings by the store to the general authorities of the church. And apparently one day, somebody was offended that he/she could see the nipples of the mannequins poking out through whatever outfit was draped over it. So word came down from on high (the Mormon church) to the VP of Marketing (who was a woman and non-Mormon…I loved her) to the head of display to remove the offending nipples. I don’t remember if they filed them off or clipped them off. But I can just imagine those poor gay boys molesting the hard breasts of stiff women all day until no traces of nipples could be found. And then, what did they do with all of those leftovers? I would have taken them.
Ah, the good old days.
Filed under: Humor, Life Lessons, Lesbian, Mormon, Utah, Marketing
The level of wrong here is off the scale. I shuddered when I read “clipped them off.” gah!
Funny the things religious zealots get offended by. Usually it’s something natural, like sex or the human body, but never violence. Because, you know, disapproving of wars is just so dang unpatriotic!
nipples are so offensive, not!
This is one of the things I just don’t get in Utah. It’s like in the supermarkets how they have to cover magazines with a black sheet so you cannot see the cover shot. and I’m not talking about playboy - I was in Dan’s one time and they had Shape Magazine covered - so I pulled it out and there was a nice picture of a female athlete in spandex - obviously a runner and in great shape. So I asked the checkout clerk why its covered - she informed me that people get offended! I told her that was ridiculous and that I was offended by the cover of National Inquirer which had some story about a celebrity sleeping with an alien… but she refused to cover it. obviously the Eagle Forum is not concerned about alien sex.
Hahaha!!! This whole thing was one of the favorite running jokes back in my Student Review days!!!
So you didn’t get to personally do the filing yourself?
This is my first time posting here…but I was not sure whether to laugh or cringe while reading your post.
It reminds me of a friend who told me, after watching the first spiderman movie, “I liked the movie but I did not like that one part. That was completely unnecessary.” I had no idea what he was talking about and sought an explanation to which he said, “You know, the kissing scene. It was not appropriate…you could see her nipples. That was gross.”
Why are we wanting to hide nipples? I don’t get it.
Why is it that we want to hide nipples? I don’t get it. Nipples are a beautiful thing.
Why on earth would anybody want to hide nipples? People need to get a life.
I’m mormon and in now way offended by nipples. I’m completely pro-nipple. There is a big difference between “Utah” mormons and mormons outside of Utah, and this post is a good example of a “Utah” mormon overreacting.
Make that “no way offended . . .”
Come on guys.. teenage boys might get excited seeing plastic nipples…Dont you know? We cant contribute to the wanton soals of a miner..
They gould have used bandades like we used to use in highschool.. HAHA!!