Just the dirt

Irony is dangerous in the wrong hands. Used correctly, it can make the day go much better; used incorrectly, it creates people who think they are funnier than they really are. Presumably, the people who created the line of Dirty Girl Accessories thought young women find it amusing to use products with suggestive names, hence the Dirty Girl Extra Fancy Purse ($34), Dirty Girl Lip Gloss ($14) and Dirty Girl Extra Fancy Soap ($9, all available at www.bagshop.com). The soap is claimed to remove up to 98 percent of guilt, and is said to be effective on all seven deadly sins, which proves that the product is intended for nondirty girls who act ironically dirty; real dirty girls don’t feel guilt or consider most sins to be sins. And, besides the poor use of irony, I won’t stand by while yet another word becomes sanitized and devalued. “Dirty” should be reserved for child molesters and those men who lurk at the porn stores on Woodward Avenue or Eight Mile.