Equal Opportunity Shame

Last night, while watching The Great Educator aka television, I was able to realize something. Men and women are pretty different. (This isn’t what I realized, I’ll get to that, I’m working my way up to that.) There’s a lot of things about us that you just can’t compare. For instance, you can say that certain sexual acts that focus on one sex are equal to certain similar acts that are on the other. But they really aren’t. They’re quite different. Not that I’ve experienced all of them, but just my common sense says they’re quite different. Pushing something in negative space and accepting something into negative space seem like two different things to me. And what about boobs? What is the guy equivalent of breasts? I don’t really think there is one. Because generally most guys like to look at boobs. But I don’t think all women like to look at penises. This is my belief. But last night I realized there was such an equalizer and that’s in commercials.

As a male, we are forced to watch quite a lot of thinning hair commercials. Like A LOT. It could be anything from straight toupees to the hair club for men to propecia. There’s a ton. And it’s embarrassing. And girls don’t have to go through such an indignity with their hair(well, a very few do). But they do have their own curse. And that’s their moon cycle.

And last night it hit me—this is their shame. It’s the endless parade of commercials for feminine products. And just like the baldie commericals for guys, the tampons et al commercials are also embarrassing. The worst part is when they demonstrate with some blue liquid how absorbant these maxipads or tampons or what. And how gross that is. That blue liquid is of course meant to represent their mensies!

I think very few people guys or girls watch either of these style of commericals and then go to the store and open their wallets because of them. Girls don’t go and think, “you know what? i want the ones with wings! they seem more absorbant AND fun!” and guys aren’t going to generally think, “you know what? i WILL ask my doctor about that.”

In closing, I think it all works out. We’re both suitably shamed and feel awful about ourselves. However, I would also like to point out the frightening ends of all the Cialis/Viagra ads which say consult a doctor if your erection lasts longer than 4 hours. Which is tantamount to saying that erections of 2 hours and 3 hours are completely normal. This is scary.