OK, I realize that in this commercial age, no opportunity for advertizing must be lost (just watch any NASCAR race to understand that) but when exactly did the butt become a billboard?

Take a look at the posterior side of shorts these days and you will find them emblazoned with brand names, school names or whatnot.

Label identification has come a long way (or short way). When even school stadiums now carry sponsor's names, the age of commercialization is complete.

Or is it? In Taiwan, prostitutes sell space on their bodies for tattoo ads (condoms are a popular commodity for such art) and police cars in cash-strapped East St. Louis, Illinois, carry sponsor names.

And sponsors, knowing that any healthy heterosexual male is going to look at a nice butt in tight shorts, knows this is the way to sell the product, so to speak.

But what happens when the butt ain't all that tight and the sponsor's name is stretched across a broad expanse of backside that qualifies as a small country?

When it comes to butt ads, is bigger better? Should the butt be the size of a roadside billboard? Or is less what we need to see in ass-ver-tizing?

Stumbled across just such an example not long ago -- a pair of shorts with the Abercrombe & Fitch logo. Abercrombe pitches its line of clothes to nubile young things whose figures are usually just this side of emaciated.

Not sure this view is quite what the retailer had in mind, although anyone who's ever looked at Abercombe and Fitch's now-defunct catalog knows a distinct lack of clothing fits more into their image.

Are we being sexist in even asking the question? Should we place so much emphasis on a lithe young body when most of the real world is a big broader in size and structure? Guilty as charged.