"Advertising helps me decide"

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What would you think if in the middle of the most recent episode of Cashmere Mafia a commercial came on where a lovely young woman walked along a pretty village sidewalk with a beaver in her arms? Wait, it doesn't stop there. No, this woman and her beaver proceed to go to the park...then out for coffee....then to buy balloons...and then to a romantic restaurant for a cozy little dinner where the woman proceeds to hand her little beaver friend A PACKET OF SANITARY NAPKINS.....GIFT WRAPPED!

The voice over then says something to the effect of "You’ve only got one. So for the ultimate care down there, make it U.”

Do you get it? Do you? I had to think about it at first, and then I was shocked! I mean, I was under the impression that calling your beaver well....your BEAVER was wholly inappropriate. Am I wrong in this? Are we now supposed to walk around referring to the female genitalia as the beaver? (ala, "My poor beaver really would prefer I wore granny-panties rather than thong underwear?") (Note: this is fairly disturbing but true. I love good old fashioned cotton undies!)

My yoga instructor (who always tells the men in our class to tighten the "muscles between the genitals and the anus"....yick!) would likely not agree, and being that she can fold herself in half AND does not shave her armpits I'm totally taking her as my model for the new-feminist.

Now, I'm not really a feminist (I mean, beyond the typical I think woman have a right to equal wages type of stuff) but I really just don't want to call any parts of my body by animals names. I just don't want to. And its just the icing on the cake that these types of names ONLY ever become attached to parts of the female body that have a sexual function. Hmmmm, go figure.

I'm not on a soapbox here and I wanted to give a fair assessment, so I called JL to get his take on the matter. As luck would have it, he had viewed the same commercial last night to which he said "I was shocked aloud." "Thought it was just hopeless." While I have no idea what those statements literally mean (how can someone be "shocked aloud"? does that make any sense at all?) I do get the sense that he's on the same page as me.

In lthe name of further research we then went to the font of all wisdom (i.e., google) where we learned that so many other people had been offended that Kotex had to actually pull the commercial (what braniac thought this up in the first place? (actually, if we're being completely honest, that person is kind of a genius. i mean ads are supposed to be attention-grabbing right. well this one sure grabbed my attention!) But what was even more surprising were the people who actually LOVED the commercial.

One of those people said:

"Fantastic concept. The ad looks like it's achieved everything intended - controversy and public attention for a product which has previously been lost in an amateur advertising campaign; centered around coloured packaging and how it relates to the lives of gen y women. Well done Kotex!"

So now I'm really disturbed. Are all these ads aimed at "gen y" woman? Does that mean, that because I don't like them, I am not a "gen y" woman? At the age of 32, what am I? A "gen x"? "gen w"? Am I finally to the age where I do not have to be influenced by every revolutionary new type of advertisement? Am I? AM. I.?

Fantastic. Finally.

Now if I can just learn to stop luxuriating in the lives of B-grade celebrities I'll be perfectly grown up.

That and giving up the cotton panties, I suppose.

:)