Bad Bad Ad ---- Whyyyyy?

The irony of this particular blog-post is that I spent a good part of my life working in media.

The sales people that sell commercials in my town are among my many acquaintances.

Yet this is going to be my big treatise on television commercials.

I may be ‘venting’ a bit….

When we were kids you could not show a man and a woman on television in bed together. Lucy and Desi had to sleep in separate beds.

You could not show a person wearing underwear. We used plastic see-thru mannequins. (Flesh-toned mannequins were deemed too realistic).

Pregnancy, toilets, belly buttons - all words and pictures forbidden by television censorship in the 1950's and '60's.

Since all of those social barriers have been broken, all hell hath broken loose. God Bless America!

I remember when people started using the word 'ass' publicly (I'm still uncomfortable to spell it out here).

I thought I was a hip and swinging hippie chick. But apparently I was born to be a prude.

Is it not enough that medical conditions are now plainly discussed in commercials?

Graphic depictions of psoriasis, vaginal itch, feminine odor, snot and phlegm remedies, toe fungus, chapped lips, cracked feet, flabby bladders, malfunction of the phallus...?

Was it not bad enough to watch cartoon cross-sections of bowels in action, or the ones that go to great length to explain all about being ‘fresh down there’?

When Ronald Reagan had colon surgery in 1984, and somehow the news had pictures of that, I hid under the bed to get away from it. If only in my mind.

Skip to the year 2000, when toilet paper-lovin' bears materialize in America. I now LIVE under my bed.

Sex and promiscuity on tv are bad, but those commercials suggest end of times.

Charmin claims that their interests lie in “bring(ing) people better bathroom experiences.”

References to your potentially dirty underwear! (Bears don’t even WEAR underwear!!) Discussions on how clean your heiney is! Bits of toilet paper strew across your gluteals! Your parents constantly checking your butt for debris!??

'Enjoy the Go'? Yikes!!

Allow me to state this for the record.

Please Stop This!

There is nothing about the 'bathroom experience', that I wish to see, hear, discuss, think about, share, or be reminded of. At any point in the day, week, month, or year. Under any circumstance. Whatsoever!

It's been two decades of watching cartoon bears talk about their butts. And the paper bits that get caught in them.

But the spawn! Toilet paper that wipes blue goo off of Arm#1, better than it wipes blue goo off of Arm#2.

Pills and potions that push a brown cylinder swiftly through a cartoon intestine.

So just when I thought that dingleberries on bears and the transit path of poo, was the end of civilization as we knew it, these ‘fresh’ sprays for women come along.

And then dramatizations of pads that leak and pads that don't leak. And 'poons' that soak up (red) liquid and expand.

Then somehow the poo returns, as a little box follows me around and extols the virtues of testing my poo at home.

And then, as if the phallus refuses to be ignored, we now have Peyronie's disease, and the 'bent carrot', which I have to admit is more humorous than it is horrific.

The rest of this stuff is truly awful, IMHO.

I realize I sound like something of a bonehead, disparaging the promotion of self-care and preventative products on television.

But how many times did you grimace, as the different elements of this blog-post were laid before you?

I feel like NONE of us wants to hear or even think about this stuff.

And now I find myself in a place where I would usually offer up a suggestion to improve or overcome or handle the subject matter, for the betterment of all humankind.

I would say that America should re-visit the elegant art of being discreet. But that will never happen. Genie almost never goes back into the box... or however that saying goes.

I guess I just needed to vent... and find out if I'm the only one that misses the innocence we've lost.

Other than turn off the tv, I got nothin'.... Sorry... :-(