This past week when my family and I were on vacation, I actually had a few moments to park myself on the beach and enjoy some uninterrupted downtime while I read a magazine. The magazine was just OK, but the advertisements really made me think. Here’s what I learned….
I Hate Baths…Much to my kids delight, there was a Jacuzzi tub in our hotel room. So when we got home from a long day at the beach, my son couldn’t wait to take a nice, long, hot bath before he went to bed. When he was finished, I went in the bathroom to rinse off the residual bubbles from the sides of the tub and much to my disgust, there was a black ring of sand, sunscreen and filth around the tub (insert dry heave). So when I came across one of those women’s razor ads in my magazine (you know the one… the beautiful woman relaxing in her tub, hair loosely tied up in a bun surrounded by candles and over-flowing bubbles…while gracefully and effortlessly holding her leg out of the water, as she admires her smooth, toned, freshly shaven leg), I immediately felt queasy. I know the advertisers were hoping that I would imagine myself in the calm and serene staged environment that they created, but truthfully all I could think of was “Who would want to sit in the water that they just rinsed their razor off in. Isn’t the stubble and dead skin from her legs now collecting around her neck like the sand around the tub in my hotel room?” And let’s be real for a minute (because some people actually like baths and can get past the gray stubble water), how many of us have the core strength to actually hold up our leg long enough to shave the entire thing. I know I would have to put it down at least once, and then have to reapply the shaving cream because it all just washed off in the pool of water that I am sitting in. Shower please!
Dramatizations Aren’t Real…I came across an ad for Neosporin ointment, which triggered me to ask my husband,
“Do you remember the Neosporin TV commercial where they held up two peoples index fingers, side-by-side, and both had the same cut on them? (I hold up my two fingers to demonstrate, as I know he is only half listening) One of the fingers had been treated with Neosporin and healed, and the other finger got infected because the person chose to do nothing?”
He nods and tells me “I guess so.”
“How do you think they decide which actor gets the Neosporin?”
“What are you talking about?”
“When they get cut, one gets Neosporin, one doesn’t…how do they decide who let’s their cut go so far that it gets infected?  Do you think that person just gets more money?”
“I’m embarrassed for you” he says barely able to get his words out.
“Wait why…what?”
“They don’t really get cut.”
“What do you mean? Yes, they do. It says it’s a dramatization.”
Now my husband can’t breathe.
When I read the dramatization disclaimer, I just assumed that Neosporin hired a doctor to surgically cut the actor’s fingers a week before they were ready to shoot the commercial. In my mind, I thought what they were showing was real, just that it took place in a controlled environment. The “drama” part to me was the fact that they actually got cut, and one had to endure the infection…sounds dramatic enough, no?
“It’s all make up and special effects simulating the situation…they don’t actually cut the people. Who would do that?”
Now I’m embarrassed for me…
Size Does Matter…There was an ad for Poise Bladder Supports that featured Brooke Burke (Dancing with Stars) on an Old Hollywood-style film set with a quote from her that read “Ladies Don’t Need an Extravagant Production to Talk About LBL (Light Bladder Leakage).” I thought, I don’t need to talk about it at all, just watch me do 20 jumping jacks in my morning exercise class and you’ll know it’s a problem. While I was a little surprised that Brooke was their spokesperson, I was even more surprised to see that one of their products looks like a tampon, which they referred to as a “bladder support.” How does that work? I didn’t think anything was supposed to go in that…hole. On the surface, it doesn’t seem very safe and completely unheard of, so I immediately went to the Poise website to research. I thought, I must be missing something here.
Fortunately, there was a FAQ section on their website, and I was glad to see that I wasn’t the only one that had questions. But when I started reading, the mystery continued. First question: Which size is right for me? Size? They come in sizes? I guess I never considered that the size of my pee hole mattered, or that it differed from the next woman. Then I started to think “Is this what happens as I get older? That my urethra loses its elasticity (like everything else on my body) and that it doesn’t close on its own anymore…like it has permanent slack-jaw?” I kept reading.
Well, I am here to tell you the good news…it doesn’t go in there (insert sigh of relief), it goes where everything else goes. Turns out, your urethra and vagina share a wall, and this support device is used to prop up or brace the wall to make sure that it doesn’t open up when you sneeze, laugh, dance or do jumping jacks. As for sizing of the device…well, I guess with anything that goes in there, it all depends on how wet you want to get.