wrong focus, seriously
at target this weekend, i spent a few minutes in the feminine hygiene aisle, and as the product of the advertising age that i am, i snuck a peek at those "feminine napkins" that come with a moist towlette attached to each individually-wrapped package. you know, to keep your business dazzling.
sidetrack #1: when i saw the first ads years ago for rembrandt's tooth whitening system, i predicted the trend towards advertisers' finding one more natural thing about ourselves to find "ugly" and "treatable." and sure enough, if your teeth are their natural shade, or anything less white than freshly fallen snow, you've got a cosmetic deficiency. i'm thinking of taking up smoking just to yellow my teeth enough to rebel to this -- or would red wine stains be just as good? hmmm . . . enough wine to stain my teeth and keep me fat-mouse healthy?
sidetrack #2/overshare #1: i was similarly disturbed by the ads last year or the year before in which some plain-jane woman accosted nice ladies in the femhyg aisle asking about ::shhh:: "embarrassing odor." what the fuck?!? first of all, if your business has enough "embarrassing odor" to need worry about using a scented maxipad, you've got bigger problems than some baby powder scent will help with. and if they're selling this shit to regular, healthy women, we're now (or again) supposed to be embarrassed about (and ready to "treat") the totally not embarrassing smells of our own bodies? i mean, didn't we all get over smells(-and-tastes) issues once we got our first non-high-school boyfriends (or while we had good high-school boyfriends)? i wondered during that whole ad campaign whether we'd soon be seeing some jockish dude coming up to regular joes in the shower-gel aisle, gesturing subtley "down there," hinting about embarrassing odors. seriously, we all know that boys don't always smell the greatest, but somehow society doesn't have any "fishy" equivalents for teenage girls to toss back at their asshole counterparts. why is that?
anyhow, back to the always clean things
. a note on the back touts that the wipes are "dermatologist tested and approved." is it just me, or is it not a dermatologist's seal of approval i need here. not so much the silky softness of my skin i'm worried about. how about y'all get yourselves a gynecologist to do some testing, always?
sidetrack #1: when i saw the first ads years ago for rembrandt's tooth whitening system, i predicted the trend towards advertisers' finding one more natural thing about ourselves to find "ugly" and "treatable." and sure enough, if your teeth are their natural shade, or anything less white than freshly fallen snow, you've got a cosmetic deficiency. i'm thinking of taking up smoking just to yellow my teeth enough to rebel to this -- or would red wine stains be just as good? hmmm . . . enough wine to stain my teeth and keep me fat-mouse healthy?
sidetrack #2/overshare #1: i was similarly disturbed by the ads last year or the year before in which some plain-jane woman accosted nice ladies in the femhyg aisle asking about ::shhh:: "embarrassing odor." what the fuck?!? first of all, if your business has enough "embarrassing odor" to need worry about using a scented maxipad, you've got bigger problems than some baby powder scent will help with. and if they're selling this shit to regular, healthy women, we're now (or again) supposed to be embarrassed about (and ready to "treat") the totally not embarrassing smells of our own bodies? i mean, didn't we all get over smells(-and-tastes) issues once we got our first non-high-school boyfriends (or while we had good high-school boyfriends)? i wondered during that whole ad campaign whether we'd soon be seeing some jockish dude coming up to regular joes in the shower-gel aisle, gesturing subtley "down there," hinting about embarrassing odors. seriously, we all know that boys don't always smell the greatest, but somehow society doesn't have any "fishy" equivalents for teenage girls to toss back at their asshole counterparts. why is that?
anyhow, back to the always clean things
. a note on the back touts that the wipes are "dermatologist tested and approved." is it just me, or is it not a dermatologist's seal of approval i need here. not so much the silky softness of my skin i'm worried about. how about y'all get yourselves a gynecologist to do some testing, always?
posted by stella at 6:00 PM
2 Comments:
by the way, don't miss the link at "feminine hygiene." fer real.
Umm yeah - I've avoided the scented fem hyg all my life because that is a pretty specific odor. Basically everyone knows it's your time of the month because you smell like a scented pad.
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