It's well known that Jamie Lee Curtis immerses herself in the worlds of her characters. While her sweaty scenes with John Travolta grabbed our national imaginination in the 1985 aerobics thriller Perfect, they also tend to obscure the empathetic nuances of Curtis's craft: her incisive awareness of the aerobics instructor's lonely, embarassing struggle with moisture. The long, agonizing, and burn-dissipating walk to the mirror to pick up a sweat towel.
The lessons and challenges of Perfect served Curtis well when she and her husband Christopher Guest adopted their first child in 1986. What is parenting, after all, but a never-ending jazzercize class where the wipes are always just out of reach?
While a more selfish parent would just complain, or stash some extra wipes in her purse, car, and on-set trailer, such stopgap solutions were not enough for Curtis, no. She had an idea, a vision, a dream, a hope for a better infant garment world.
And yet, where is it? When Jamie Lee Curtis offered the world her patented Diaper With a Couple of Wipes In An Attached, Moisture-Proof Pocket, what did the Lords of the Diaper Industrial Complex give us instead? Freakin' Muppets.
But now, with just six weeks before the patent expires, it may be Curtis's infant garment future that will be conveniently at hand. Soon, the world's diaper manufacturers will be free to stick moisture-proof wipe pockets on baby butts everywhere, royalty-free. Please, Milords, don't make us wait any longer.
Patent number: 4753647 - Infant Garment, Jamie L. Curtis [google patent search, via celebrity patents via waxy]
Wait, I thought 1983's Trading Places already left nothing to the imagination..?
[don't think I didn't try to work that movie into the story, but the 4-yr gap between the film and the filing left only two reasons to do so. Sorry. -ed.]