CULTURE WATCH : Chrome Ladies Branch Out

She used to hang out just with truckers, but lately she’s everywhere. She’s the metallic, mind-bogglingly buxom woman who reclines in silhouette on license-plate frames, car decals and other accouterments of the male car cult.

She has inspired leering T-shirts that ask, “Who is this girl, and what is her phone number?”

“Oh, chrome ladies,” says Darryl Roth, manager of Western Auto in Bell. “We sell a ton of those--I’d say on the average of 50 pairs a month. It just seems to be a fad.”

He adds that the chrome lady is branching out of auto accessories and now appears on money clips and tie clips--sometimes in less-than-ladylike positions.

This popular gal is actually not new. For years she weighed down mud flaps on big rigs to keep them from swinging. Recently she’s evolved into a full-fledged passion among the would-be macho drivers of everything from 4x4s to station wagons.

But some guys concede she may be an eyesore to real, live women.

“Me, personally, I wouldn’t get one,” says Tony Santos, an assistant manager at a local Pep Boys auto store. “I think it will offend the women.”

Roth of Western Auto says his truck is also chrome lady-free. “It’s just a matter of taste.”

But just to show it’s an equal opportunity market, the chrome lady does have a male counterpart: The improbably buff chrome man. However, women drivers apparently aren’t buying: Roth says he sells 20 chrome ladies for every chrome guy.