Smack it up ... flip it ... rub it down ... Oh, no.

By Roland Lara on Jan 24, 2006 3:10PM

Spanish-language radio station La Ley (“¡cientosietepuntonuevelaley!”) some months ago put up racy ads all over the city that skate close to the line and might even go right the hell over it.

Dawn Turner Trice at the Trib wrote about the ad and the fall-out yesterday. Chicagoist is humbly reproducing La Ley's ad here:
You can also see a copy of the Trib's photo of a billboard featuring the ad here. And, why, yes, you’re certainly looking at line of women with their hands on their behinds.

Now while the sight of about a dozen women wearing what cannot even be characterized as Daisy Dukes probably would rankle only the most staid Victorian doyenne these days, it’s the Spanish play on words with pegaditas that takes us into some questionable territory. “Pegaditas” means “hits,” and in Spanish, a “hit” in this context is the same as in English: it means a successful song as well as getting smacked.

So, there’s your “aha” moment.

We’re all for edgy, but you don’t need to be Betty Friedan to see that La Ley’s treading close to total dumbass territory: having a big ad tying their playlist with spanking the asses of faceless Latina women.

Dawn Turner Trice writes that Females United for Action took just that. They began their anti-ad campaign in November, and they also went to talk to the station in person, who seemed shocked - shocked! – that people might find the ad in bad taste, that Latina women might not like listening to the radio linked with faceless hotties getting knocked around.

Also, “la ley” means “the law.”

“Hits.” Faceless women. Laying down “the law.” This is starting to sound like a Red Shoe Diary ... or the Ike Turner autobiography.