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July 15, 2005
Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #17: The subliminal sensuality of the Starbucks siren
You definitely know it seems like there's a Starbucks coffee shop practically at every street corner in Manhattan. Have you been enticed by the spacious (for Manhattan anyway), well-lit spaces of their coffee shops? Or is it the warm feeling of a $4 latte down your yuppie gullet that you desire? Could it perhaps be something else? Surely you have noticed the Starbucks logo by every store. Does the woman in the logo try to seduce you subliminally into having Starbucks coffee? Let's find out.
The other day I heard a couple of my friends mention that they'd heard that the Starbucks logo is seductive in a subliminally sensual way. Initially, I dismissed it as the stuff of urban legend but later I consulted the almighty G on a whim and found something interesting.
The Starbucks logo features a siren surrounded by the words Starbucks Coffee. Sirens, in ancient Greek mythology, were sea nymphs who sang sweetly and lured sailors to destruction on rocks surrounding their islands. The siren has been linked to the symbol of a mermaid in other cultures. Recently, Starbucks was forced to change its logo because customers found the topless double-tailed siren in the original logo lurid and too overtly suggestive. A simplified, stylized logo, where the wavy hair of the siren covers her breasts, was introduced in its place. The double-tailed siren, a decorative motif found in many European churches and cathedrals, represents female sexual mysteries, according to an excellent article on the symbology of the siren-mermaid as it relates to the Starbucks logo. The article reviews a lot of cultural symbology related to the siren-mermaid in a Robert Langdon(à la The Da Vinci Code)-esque manner. I never realized that the two appendages to the left and right of the siren in today's Starbucks logo were her fins. In the original logo, however, the double-tailed siren is holding them apart in a suggestive pose reminiscent of an ancient Indo-European mother goddess of fertility and sexuality, known as Sheila-Na-Gig (potentially not safe for work).
So the next time you find yourself being lured into Starbucks' plan for world domination, ask yourself if its the sensual siren who is drawing you in...*wink*
Posted by Vishy at July 15, 2005 07:41 PM