Saturday, April 30, 2011

Mudflap Girl

by Keith Barry

If you’ve driven anywhere in the past 30-odd years, chances are you’ve seen the chromed silhouette of a reclining woman affixed to the mudflaps of a big rig. She’s known far and wide as Mudflap Girl, but Ed Allen has another name for her: Mom.

Allen, a fashion designer in Washington, D.C., claims the image was designed by his father Stewart, a long-haul trucker who always decorated his rig with an image of his wife, Rachel Ann. Now, Ed Allen is paying homage to Mudflap Girl, er, mom, with a line of shirts bearing her voluptuous profile, for which he now owns the trademark.

“She’s one of the few really hot women that your wife will still let you wear, because we all remember her,” Allen said.

Before we could page Dr. Freud, Allen let us know the original image was quite innocent, a simple vacation photo of mom in a bathing suit. It was nothing the whole family hadn’t seen countless times before.

Dad kept the photo in the cab of his truck, which always bore his wife’s name on the hood. When a new corporate owner forbade Stewart from decorating a company-owned vehicle, Stewart put his wife’s silhouette on his trailer’s mudflaps so his boss couldn’t see her when the truck was backed up to a loading dock.

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