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Richard Branson: He Probably Took Your Virginity
Tuesday 31st July 2012 | Osh
It seems we aren’t far off opening the Oxford English dictionary one day and finding small copy-write c’s hanging above various words. And once this begins when will the alphabet become subject to ownership? Apple will get the letter ‘I’ so that we can no longer refer to ourselves in the first person, leading to an eventual demise in individualism.
Denim company ‘I AM NOT A VIRGIN’ have recently found themselves in trouble due to this apparent copywriting of the English language. They have been warned by Richard Branson that if they don’t change their company name which they have owned the trademark for, for three and a half years then Virgin Enterprises Ltd. will start a petition to cancel I AM NOT A VIRGIN’s registration.
I AM NOT A VIRGIN is so named because it is an eco friendly company, making its products from non-virgin materials. The recycled materials in I AM NOT A VIRGIN jeans include brown bottles, and their t-shirts are made from recycled food trays, clear water bottles and discarded X-Ray film. It is quite apparent that the company’s title therefore, is not an attempt to create business off the back of Branson’s successes, but to make their policy and work ethic apparent through their title.
Branson suggests that the company should possibly change to “I am not chaste”. Given that Branson himself so named his company for its affiliation with the title ‘Virgin’(he and his partner’s being new to business) surely he could understand I AM NOT A VIRGIN’s own affiliation with the word. Branson also suggests that I AM NOT A VIRGIN’s use of the word Virgin is the same as stating “I am not a Mercedes” or “I am not a Coke”. This is not the case, Coke and Mercedes refer to specific objects and are words that were not previously in the English language.
This whole case highlights how capitalism infiltrated our culture. A copy-write on the word Virgin, a word most associated with religion, being ‘owned’ by a corporation is something out of a Marxist Satire on evil Capitalists. Richard: calm down. How much is a small denim company which is promoting an ecological message, which you yourself agree with, going to affect your millions? Owner of I AM NOT A VIRGIN Peter Heron has enough belief in consumer intelligence that they could distinguish between the two brands. I want to correct his spelling mistake: consumers will have the intelligence to distinguish between the two Bransons; the Branson who promotes small businesses and helps the environment and the Branson who is apparently an evil corporate dictator.
Mallory McDonald
