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Big Johnson T-shirts and Christian Comparison

Our obsession with what we're "not" betrays our insecurity.

In the mid-90's, there was a popular (and dreadful) series of "Big Johnson" novelty t-shirts for guys. You remember—those sophomoric t-shirts that not-so-subtly touted the size of one's genitals with crude, witless metaphors.

At one point, the majority of guys at our school owned one. This could have been because of one of two possibilities:

1. There was a secret virus unleashed upon the public and undetected by science, that targeted 12-19 year old males resulting in gargantuan genitalia.

2. This was a display of adolescent insecurity that really had nothing to do with large genitals (perhaps actually indicating the opposite), and more a statement about the parents who let their kids wear such shirts than any actual anatomical abnormalities.

Option two seems more likely.

It makes sense that the perfect storm of adolescent insecurity would make high school males want to find identity with silly "mine is bigger than yours" rhetoric. If only this kind of juvenile comparison was limited only ...

March
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