On Saturday I had a discussion with some friends about how Hy Vee dominates the grocery market in Iowa City and the rest of Iowa. Sure, they have a great selection and great hours, but they are also a corporate monster. The truth is, theres hardly a helpful smile in any aisle. It is always crowded.The prices aren't great and the produce and sometimes meat are often of very poor quality. In short, Hy Vee is mediocre and there are many better choices (at least here in Iowa City there are).

So yesterday I went to Hy Vee and the key to their success was crystal clear. Hy Vee employs a lot of attractive teenage females. It's the Playboy Mansion of the average mans crude taboo fantasies. This adds a powerful advantage over other grocers who employ those from a larger range of gender, age and beauty standards. And even if Local Mart had attractive young women employed, Hy Vee would still have more employess on the clock at any given time (besides late-night), thus, more pretty teenage girls. This environment is attractive to most-but-not-all straight men.Hy Vee has become a place where men will happily go shopping with their wives! Or even just a solo stint up and down it's aisles on the knowledge that the checkout area will be a pleasant purchasing experience fraught with jailbait eye candy. This is a perfect place for the average pervert to cast actresses for his next masturbatory mindscape. I'm not suggesting that most men (myself included) are perverts who want to actually have sex with sixteen year old girls. However, for many men sex is a very visually orientated activity,and the truth is that most females skipping through the last parts of puberty fullfill exactly the role indicated by our societies views of beauty for women. Im not here to argue how artificial those roles may or may not be. I'm not going to argue that it's okay to view women as sex monkeys*, especially not young females. I'm just saying that Hy Vee isn't the most successful grocer in Iowa just because of it's questionable products and services. It's all about the babes.

*Just because I do, and because aren't they?