Kotex has just released a new line of tampons: how exciting! Not really, I know. What people (mostly women) are stoked on regarding this new line of tampons is the accompanying advertising that is refreshingly wry and clever. In the first commercial that was released for the line, a jaded young woman mocks traditional pad and tampon advertising: she drips sarcasm as she explains that she just loves dancing and hugging soft things while she’s on her period.
When I first watched, I chuckled. Who amongst us hasn’t re-enacted the rose-tints-my-menstruating-world ridiculousness of those ads? I laughed, but I also made “that face” (in which you can see the storm clouds brewing in my mind), meaning I thought something was off. Read more...
The Backstory:
A few months ago, I found a copy of Cosmo lying open on my living room coffee table. In an article’s subtitle, emblazoned beside Megan Fox’s slinky form, was the word natch. Natch? I have a pretty crackerjack vocabulary, if I do say so myself, so when I saw this unrecognizable word, I wondered if natch was the latest euphemism for vagina. I figured that was likely—it was Cosmo after all, the magazine that manages to essentially reprint the same article on how-to best blow your man issue-by-issue, if not every fourth article. But then as I muttered the full headline out loud, “Now that [Megan’s] acting in her first true starring role—as a hellacious man-eater, natch—blah blah blah” I realized that natch is an abbreviation of naturally, spelled phonetically. (I also felt really slow on the uptake.) Read more...