Bumper Stickers
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
What are they?
Bumper stickers are strips of adhesive paper of varying sizes with words, ideas, or pictures printed on the non-adhesive side. They're meant to be placed on the bumper of your car, but can, of course, be placed just about anywhere.
What purpose do they serve?
The provide the ordinary Joe with a means of telling the world exactly who s/he is and what s/he thinks about that. They advertise products, services, and religions, enable upstanding citizens to gloat about being upstanding citizens, allow not-so-upstanding citizens to annoy the upstanding citizens, etc. Bumper stickers are by no means strictly an American institution, but in the U.S., bumper sticker choice and placement has become an art form in its own right; see examples below.
Common Bumper Stickers:
These can be seen on about one vehicle in ten on the road, especially if the vehicle is a minivan.
*"D.A.R.E! To keep kids off drugs."
*"My child is an honor roll student at (insert name of school here)".
*Something Christianity-themed, including but not limited to: "No Jesus, No Peace/Know Jesus, Know Peace"; "We belive in Jesus"; "God is my Co-Pilot" (or, for the even more religious folk, "God is my Pilot"); "My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter", and many, many, many more.
*Something sports themed, including but not limited to the names and logos of pro football, baseball, basketball, and hockey teams, as well as the numbers of the cars of racecar drivers Dale Earnhart and...well, really, it's mostly just Dale Earnhart.
White Ovals of Origin
These are white stickers, oval in shape, with black letters in them. The letters represent the driver's home country (DK for Denmark, GB for Great Britain, etc.). In Europe, where drivers frequently cross international borders, the stickers are mandatory, serving a similar purpose to the license plate in helping to identify the car. Lately, however, people in places like California, which contains no foreign countries, have been adapting the white ovals to their own purposes. For example, a person who is particularly proud of living in Huntington Beach may sport a white oval with the letters "HB" on his trunk, while someone from Long Beach will sport "LB", and so on. It has yet to be determined whether these stickers serve any purpose other than assuring their owners of their proper place in the world.
Look! My kid goes to college!
Parents of teenagers in college are proud of the fact that their child has chosen to get a higher education. The sense of relief this choice brings apparently prompts the parents to plaster every available surface with the college's propaganda; at the bare minimum they will purchase a clear sticker emblazoned with the college's name, for rear-windshield placement. The students of these schools generally avoid the rear-windshield sticker; if they do have one on their car, they will probably take pains to ensure that it is not your typical college rear-windshield sticker. For example, one young man who attended Stanford University carefully rearranged the letters on his sticker to read "Snodfart", and placed it on his windshield. For parents with a sense of humor, "My son/daughter and my money go to (insert name of college here)" is a popular substitute.
Band Stickers
....are a phenomenon unto themselves. They speak volumes about the driver's tastes and personality. For example, a beat up old white Volkswagen Golf plastered with stickers for Einsturzende Neubauten, Coil, or anything on the Cleopatra label indicates a person (usually male) who would rather be caught dead than doing anything as mundane as working a desk job, mowing the lawn, or listening to Celine Dion. For the most part, band sticker plastering is limited to punks, rivetheads, metalheads, and goths.
Hippies will also use band stickers, but tend to stick mostly with those dancing Grateful Dead bears and the colorful Phish fish.
Other assorted stickers, common or otherwise:
*"Honk if parts fall of"
*"Unless you're a hemorrhoid, get off my ass"
*"If you come any closer, I'll flick a booger on your windshield"
*"Visualize world peace"
*"Hate is not a family value"
Point/Counterpoint
Some people have become weary of seeing the same old stickers on everyone's cars, and have placed variations on their own cars.
*"P.U.N.K! Keeping kids on the street"
*"My kid beat up your honor student" (newer versions replace "beat up" with "raped" and "knocked up")
*"Jesus is coming! Look busy!"
*"Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole."
*"God was my co-pilot, but we crashed into a mountain and I had to eat him."
*"Visualize whirled peas"
*"Visualize using your turn signal"
The cars they belong to:
A car plastered with snotty bumper stickers aimed at annoying the middle-class majority (and/or band stickers) will almost always be compact, often a Volkswagen of some vintage, usually black or dingy with dirt. The driver will be young and odd looking.
A car plastered with sports-related stickers is trickier. If the sport is football (American football, that is), the car will be in good to average condition, and driven by someone who wouldn't stand out in a crowd. If it is plastered with stickers proclaiming love for a variety of sports and includes the Dale Earnhart 3, it will either be a pickup truck or a beat-up old American car, driven by someone with extraordinarily bad hair, fewer teeth than your average chicken, and country music blasting from the radio. (NOTE: Those people with the bass systems so loud that they make your teeth rattle from half a mile away, don't put bumper stickers on their cars. Their cars tend to be much too well cared for. They may, however, stick a large logo from the company who designed their nuclear sound system across their opaque rear windshield.)
A car bearing the honor roll student/Jesus melange will either be a minivan or a family sedan, and will be driven by some wholly unremarkable middle class parent.
What's with the fish?
The Jesus Fish, as it is known, is a chromed plastic fish with the word "Jesus" or some symbol of the Christian faith inside it. It is placed on the trunk or in another conspicuous spot. The Jesus Fish appears on a startling array of cars, including some that should by all rights be plastered with anti-middle-class sentiments, but is most often seen on minivans, luxury cars like Cadillacs and Lincolns driven by blue-haired old ladies, and anything driven by an African-American or person of Hispanic descent. In England, it most often appears stuck to the back end of a Volvo, driven by a non-descript lady in glasses and a cardigan.
About five years ago, some non-Christian people got tired of the Jesus Fish and made their own Fish: It had legs, and the word "Darwin" inside the Fish body. The Darwin Fish took hold slowly at first, but has finally taken its place beside the Jesus Fish as most common car decoration. The Jesus Fish people, however, are greatly disturbed by this and wish to make their feelings clear. To that end, they devised the Truth Fish: A Jesus Fish with "Truth" inside the Fish body. Its open mouth is devouring a Darwin Fish. The Darwin Fish camp has yet to come up with a snappy Fish retort to this, but are presumeably working on it.
*Note* After this researcher thought she had finished this entry, she found the long-awaited Snappy Truth Fish Send-up. It consists of an Evolution Fish (a Darwin Fish with the word "Darwin" replaced with "Evolution") doing something rather nasty to a Jesus fish. This researcher is eagerly awaiting the Jesus Fish camp's reaction.
Bumper stickers are strips of adhesive paper of varying sizes with words, ideas, or pictures printed on the non-adhesive side. They're meant to be placed on the bumper of your car, but can, of course, be placed just about anywhere.
What purpose do they serve?
The provide the ordinary Joe with a means of telling the world exactly who s/he is and what s/he thinks about that. They advertise products, services, and religions, enable upstanding citizens to gloat about being upstanding citizens, allow not-so-upstanding citizens to annoy the upstanding citizens, etc. Bumper stickers are by no means strictly an American institution, but in the U.S., bumper sticker choice and placement has become an art form in its own right; see examples below.
Common Bumper Stickers:
These can be seen on about one vehicle in ten on the road, especially if the vehicle is a minivan.
*"D.A.R.E! To keep kids off drugs."
*"My child is an honor roll student at (insert name of school here)".
*Something Christianity-themed, including but not limited to: "No Jesus, No Peace/Know Jesus, Know Peace"; "We belive in Jesus"; "God is my Co-Pilot" (or, for the even more religious folk, "God is my Pilot"); "My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter", and many, many, many more.
*Something sports themed, including but not limited to the names and logos of pro football, baseball, basketball, and hockey teams, as well as the numbers of the cars of racecar drivers Dale Earnhart and...well, really, it's mostly just Dale Earnhart.
White Ovals of Origin
These are white stickers, oval in shape, with black letters in them. The letters represent the driver's home country (DK for Denmark, GB for Great Britain, etc.). In Europe, where drivers frequently cross international borders, the stickers are mandatory, serving a similar purpose to the license plate in helping to identify the car. Lately, however, people in places like California, which contains no foreign countries, have been adapting the white ovals to their own purposes. For example, a person who is particularly proud of living in Huntington Beach may sport a white oval with the letters "HB" on his trunk, while someone from Long Beach will sport "LB", and so on. It has yet to be determined whether these stickers serve any purpose other than assuring their owners of their proper place in the world.
Look! My kid goes to college!
Parents of teenagers in college are proud of the fact that their child has chosen to get a higher education. The sense of relief this choice brings apparently prompts the parents to plaster every available surface with the college's propaganda; at the bare minimum they will purchase a clear sticker emblazoned with the college's name, for rear-windshield placement. The students of these schools generally avoid the rear-windshield sticker; if they do have one on their car, they will probably take pains to ensure that it is not your typical college rear-windshield sticker. For example, one young man who attended Stanford University carefully rearranged the letters on his sticker to read "Snodfart", and placed it on his windshield. For parents with a sense of humor, "My son/daughter and my money go to (insert name of college here)" is a popular substitute.
Band Stickers
....are a phenomenon unto themselves. They speak volumes about the driver's tastes and personality. For example, a beat up old white Volkswagen Golf plastered with stickers for Einsturzende Neubauten, Coil, or anything on the Cleopatra label indicates a person (usually male) who would rather be caught dead than doing anything as mundane as working a desk job, mowing the lawn, or listening to Celine Dion. For the most part, band sticker plastering is limited to punks, rivetheads, metalheads, and goths.
Hippies will also use band stickers, but tend to stick mostly with those dancing Grateful Dead bears and the colorful Phish fish.
Other assorted stickers, common or otherwise:
*"Honk if parts fall of"
*"Unless you're a hemorrhoid, get off my ass"
*"If you come any closer, I'll flick a booger on your windshield"
*"Visualize world peace"
*"Hate is not a family value"
Point/Counterpoint
Some people have become weary of seeing the same old stickers on everyone's cars, and have placed variations on their own cars.
*"P.U.N.K! Keeping kids on the street"
*"My kid beat up your honor student" (newer versions replace "beat up" with "raped" and "knocked up")
*"Jesus is coming! Look busy!"
*"Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole."
*"God was my co-pilot, but we crashed into a mountain and I had to eat him."
*"Visualize whirled peas"
*"Visualize using your turn signal"
The cars they belong to:
A car plastered with snotty bumper stickers aimed at annoying the middle-class majority (and/or band stickers) will almost always be compact, often a Volkswagen of some vintage, usually black or dingy with dirt. The driver will be young and odd looking.
A car plastered with sports-related stickers is trickier. If the sport is football (American football, that is), the car will be in good to average condition, and driven by someone who wouldn't stand out in a crowd. If it is plastered with stickers proclaiming love for a variety of sports and includes the Dale Earnhart 3, it will either be a pickup truck or a beat-up old American car, driven by someone with extraordinarily bad hair, fewer teeth than your average chicken, and country music blasting from the radio. (NOTE: Those people with the bass systems so loud that they make your teeth rattle from half a mile away, don't put bumper stickers on their cars. Their cars tend to be much too well cared for. They may, however, stick a large logo from the company who designed their nuclear sound system across their opaque rear windshield.)
A car bearing the honor roll student/Jesus melange will either be a minivan or a family sedan, and will be driven by some wholly unremarkable middle class parent.
What's with the fish?
The Jesus Fish, as it is known, is a chromed plastic fish with the word "Jesus" or some symbol of the Christian faith inside it. It is placed on the trunk or in another conspicuous spot. The Jesus Fish appears on a startling array of cars, including some that should by all rights be plastered with anti-middle-class sentiments, but is most often seen on minivans, luxury cars like Cadillacs and Lincolns driven by blue-haired old ladies, and anything driven by an African-American or person of Hispanic descent. In England, it most often appears stuck to the back end of a Volvo, driven by a non-descript lady in glasses and a cardigan.
About five years ago, some non-Christian people got tired of the Jesus Fish and made their own Fish: It had legs, and the word "Darwin" inside the Fish body. The Darwin Fish took hold slowly at first, but has finally taken its place beside the Jesus Fish as most common car decoration. The Jesus Fish people, however, are greatly disturbed by this and wish to make their feelings clear. To that end, they devised the Truth Fish: A Jesus Fish with "Truth" inside the Fish body. Its open mouth is devouring a Darwin Fish. The Darwin Fish camp has yet to come up with a snappy Fish retort to this, but are presumeably working on it.
*Note* After this researcher thought she had finished this entry, she found the long-awaited Snappy Truth Fish Send-up. It consists of an Evolution Fish (a Darwin Fish with the word "Darwin" replaced with "Evolution") doing something rather nasty to a Jesus fish. This researcher is eagerly awaiting the Jesus Fish camp's reaction.
