Somebody dig up the corpse of noted Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi and get his ass on a hologram Tupac track or something because motherfucker needs to add to his Four Seasons concertos. And what, pray tell, is the fifth season? Why, festival season, of course.
Everyone and their mother has put their hyper-curated spin on seeing live music at such thrilling destinations as Shitsville, Arkansas (sup, Wakarusa?) and Manchester, (but not that Manchester) Tennessee. And thanks to the overabundance of irrelevantly marketed shit, I can now sip Portuguese wine at Outside Lands, pick up as much travel-sized mouthwashes as I can carry at Voodoo Fest, and add another row to my highly varied free sunglass collection courtesy of CMJ.
The way that marketing is going – especially when it comes to skincare – is to embrace some type of natural state in which anti-aging panaceas and perfecting serums are rendered irrelevant. Dove aims to inspire women with a natural beauty campaign and Old Spice makes men feel beautiful with absurdism. Olay consistently goes against the grain on that type of shit. Enter their Festival Fresh install at this weekend’s Bonnaroo.
According to a press release I really didn’t need to receive and Bonnaroo’s news section, us dames get to look forward to girls-only lounges, as well as such things as “product samples infused with a detox recipe that make you look like you got your beauty sleep.” I’ll let you know if any of those have couches or if there are any infantile ‘No Boys Allowed’ signs posted.
The freshest thing about my festival experience is all the dank weed I smoke all the new bacteria I’m cultivating as I get back to nature and stop giving a shit about showering because music. While it’s nice that Olay wants to pamper my ass and face, #FestivalFresh is seriously the biggest oxymoron and therefore the worst tagline to give your camping-in-the-middle-of-Tennessee beauty campaign.
Come Bonnaroo, every person you’re around will smell like spilled beer, armpit, and mud. The makeup accentuating the beauty-conscious will either fade from the layer of dirt or become damn near radioactive with a halflife rivaling Plutonium. The only crowd bigger than the asshurt fans camping out at the What Stage only for Kanye to take a shit presumably five hours later than his set time will be the hoards of people waiting to take what ultimately amounts to a hobo bath.
The last thing festivalgoers need is a chance to test Olay Fresh Effects’ efficacy on a layer of dead skin and dirt in either a faux lounge setting or a bathroom that’s basically a glorified port-o-let in a trailer, especially if it’s marked for “girls” and is painted up pinker than the mosquito bites every festgoer slowly acquires once it hits dusk.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of not showering to do.
