Posing with booze

At any given time, I have about four to five different things buzzing around in my head. Ever since I started blogging, I always think, "Hey! I should blog about that!" Oftentimes, I'll get started and then realize that I just don't have enough to say to justify an entire entry. This is one of those times, but I'm going to write about it anyway.

It seems strange to me to pose with alcohol. Don't get me wrong. I'm not referring to when you're at a party and you have a drink in your hand and somebody takes your picture. I also don't mean when you're sitting at the dinner table and there's a drink in front of you. Of course, my wife has photos of me sampling beer when I went to a brewery. There's nothing strange about that.

What I'm referring to is those photos that I see where it's like the person is advertising the product. The label is clearly displayed, and while it may very well be a coincidence, it doesn't seem like it. Know where I see this the most? Photos of students and recently-graduated former students. I'm not saying that they all do it - in fact, I don't see it that often. (But to be completely fair, I don't really go through all of their photos. I'm referring to the ones on MySpace that they use as their default picture. That's when I see it.)

I've also seen it a couple of times when students have photos on their binders. Some of them will have pictures of their friends, holding a bottle with the label clearly displayed. I've seen some adults do this as well.

I don't know why that strikes me as so odd. It looks like they're saying, "Oh, my picture's going to be taken! I need to let the world know that I endorse this product!" Or perhaps they just see too many commercials with pictures of models making similar poses, so they feel like that's what they need to do when they're getting their picture taken.

Or maybe I'm just getting old and I'm disturbed to see teenagers drinking. It's not like I didn't know that they do - I just like to pretend like I don't know that sometimes.

So, is it me? Or does anybody else notice this and think that there's something weird about it too?