Wyoming Woman Says: Cheers to You, Sexy Mud Flap Girl!

There's more to this story than meets the eye.

I spotted the truck with the sexy girl mud flaps outside my favorite lunch spot yesterday afternoon and it made me smile, in spite of the years-long lectures I got in grad school about the "dangers of the male fantasy" and unrealistic body expectations from female sex symbols.

She is the bodacious North Star of the working-class road warrior, inks culture writer Magdalene Taylor. 

That sounded better than my: She is busty, she is lusty, and she smells a little musty.

You know her when you see her. Mud Flap girl is erotic and bold, her hair flows freely in the wind. She's nearly 50 years old, but hasn't aged a day, often hitching a ride on the back of an 18-wheeler flying by.

Legend has it, her silhouette was first distributed as a trucker decal by a guy named Bill Zinda.

I tried to find out who inspired the bubble-boobed figure, but I'm not sure that's possible. Several blogs, however, point to a famous stripper named Leta Laroe.

Sadly, I was unable to find a real picture of Miss Laroe for comparison.

In the early days there were some legal battles over who owned Mud Flap girl, but now there are dozens of versions and from different retailers.

In fact I literally just saw one with a cowgirl hat and chaps on the back of a welding truck. Some would say no one will every truly "own" her, she is wild and free.

“Mud Flap Girls were pretty common during the 1990s, when I was still driving over the road,” explains Cliff Abbott, a former truck driver for Mel Magazine.

“Many truck stops and chrome shops carried them in various forms, from bolt-on chromed steel versions to different types of stickers. But I don’t see them as much anymore.”

Meanwhile in Wyoming, they're not so hard to find.

In fact, the Wyoming State Library caused quite a stir when they used Mud Flap girl reading a book for a six-month campaign. The humor was lost on Some People, who also pointed that such representations can have negative health consequences for women.

The library told the Associated Press that the campaign was targeting males who work on cars to let them know about the state's free online database of repair manuals.

It was a way to market to a new demographic from what we usually see or who usually uses the library, said the library's marketing manager, Tina Lackey

By the way, the campaign was a big hit.