Selling To Men

I find advertising quite interesting—and no, not just because of Mad Men, I actually think it is often innovative and psychological. But there is one area of the rhetorical arts that never fails to astound me in its unoriginality; the selling of traditionally feminine products to men.

WKD

Look it’s two men doing some manly DIY together, you could just cut the testosterone in that room with a knife. Now look the lad’s having a bubble! What  a lad doing a lad robot dance with a macho man drill.

LAD LAD LAD.

Come on WKD, you know men don’t drink your stuff. It tastes like candyfloss!

Face Cream

Matthew Fox (?) giving us some spiel about LIFE and ACTION overlaying images of BOXING and HOT CHICKS and RUNNING then they sneakily show us this magical face cream that tells us where pussyboy women’s brands might ‘enliven’ or ‘regenerate’ this manly manly pot of creamed violence and sex appeal FIGHTS THE SIGNS OF FATIGUE.

Cause jeesh what is more manly than FIGHTING.

Tissues

Kleenex have really done us proud with this one, it’s so manly I just felt my ovaries shrivel up.

This man isn’t a wuss for crying

Look at him

He has a BULLDOG

A BRITISH BULLDOG AND TATTOOS AND STUBBLE AND A WIFEBEATER AND A WOMAN

He is allowed to cry.

And look! It’s BOB frickin GELDOF, LAUGHING IN THE FACE of some MUMMA’S BOY SISSY GIRL PANTS EXECUTIVES

Now there’s Emma Bunton, wait! She isn’t a MAN!?! Oh.. but she just ripped apart those WIMPY PINK ROSES and is ROCKIN OUT to ROCK MUSIC whilst wearing LEATHER,, it’s okay, honorary lad-ship awarded.

Now the manliest man of them all, SVEN GORAN MOTHER EFFING ERICSSON! And he’s not using the tissues, oh contraire! He’s KICKING THEM into the BIN and screaming GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAL!!!!

Oof my testicles just dropped.

In my humble opinion adverts like these are pretty offensive to men… or maybe these adverts work, I’m not sure

So boys, tell me, are you mainly into FIGHTING and LADS and FOOTBALL?

Harum-Scarum

I’ll admit it, I’m an old fashioned girl. I like my men to be men; and what screams “man” more than a delicious coating of body hair? Yes, that’s right, I’m pro-hair.

godlike

Modern media’s message to women implies that in order to be attractive we should all be totally hairless- with the exception of our eyelashes and of the hair on our head where it should be impossibly long and lustrous.

But this message is not just a problem for us girls; more and more frequently this is also indoctrinating our men!

NO!

PLEASE STOP!

LEAVE IT THERE!

(fun fact: apparently a back wax is called a "sweater removal" in certain circles LOL)

According to AskMen.com (a most excellent website I spend way too much time on) male depilation is now imperative.

Well, I’m all for a little light pruning if needs must. But lay down your wax strips and Veet and listen!

I have surveyed the populace (okay so I asked some people on facebook- deal with it) and the survey suggests that 70% of straight women are in favour of body hair, 20% don’t particularly care and only 1 person surveyed preferred her men aerodynamically hairless. I only got one result from gay men (and 100% of all surveyed says hair is good) so its probably not representative, but NEVERTHELESS, I think you should all take my painstaking research into serious consideration.

Let it grow.

Come on boys, would you rather be Peter Andre or Don Draper?

Who would you rather emulate?

• Don Draper
• Peter Andre

I am a Terrible Person

I really suck. I am a genuinely dire person and there are a lot of things that I am truly awful at. Today’s post is a list of my failings. Maybe I’ll list my talents at a later date.

Maybe.

Walking

I can’t walk properly and I’ve ruined every pair of shoes I’ve ever owned. I drag my feet and trip over all the time.

It’s gone beyond being salvageable after a trip to the cobblers. I bought these shoes at the end of November.

Washing

I tried to wash my nice white French Connection shirt, and now it’s lilac.

Tidiness

This is my desk, it’s a total bombsite. And I have no shame either, I let people into my room when it looks a helluva lot worse than this. Filth.

Sympathy

I find it really hard to be sympathetic to people. My friend just told me she burnt her hand and my reply was “hahah fool” jeesh I’m cruel. If I burnt my hand I’d expect at least a non-sarcastic “awwr you poor thing”

Having a forehead

Look at it, it’s three effing centimetres high.

In the words of HRH Tyra Banks- it’s a threehead.

Things What You May Have Not Already Have Known About The US of A

1.     Southerners will get mad if you call them a Yank.

Behind his "southern hospitality" smile lies a will of iron and the ability to become crazier than a shit-house rat. Now that's a varmint I wouldn't like to see someone get crazier than; if you know what I mean.

2.     Sideburns are named after the U.S. Civil War General, Ambrose Burnside.

I would.

3.     They call noughts and crosses tic tac toe.

4.     The reason New York has the best pizza and bagels in the world is because of the water (allegedly).

5.     This isn’t really about America but this video is hilar:

6.     Btw I’m not cheating and just googling “facts about America” these are all coming from my brain.

7.     Bulk buying Sudafed is illegal cause they use it to make crystal meth- we don’t have crystal meth here really and I for one am glad it’s not crossed over the pond. We’ll have Madonna but you can keep the drugz. 

 

Want

Do not want.

8.     They call taps faucets.. I learnt this from Uncle Buck.

9.     God this is a difficult list.

10. They spell words like dialling and modelling with only one L like dialing and modeling. But then they do get the chance to do competitive spelling which I am so jealous of it's unreal- think of all the prizes I could have won!

11. Erm.. they have pageants for little children and they truss them up like little prostitutes and stick these fake teeth on so they don’t look like they only have baby teeth. You should definitely watch Toddlers & Tiaras on DMAX if, like me, you have a sick fascination with this kind of stuff.

12. Apparently Makenzie is an acceptable first name over there; it isn’t even frickin’ spelt right.

13. They also have guns. Lots of them. The right to bear arms is very important to them- and did you guys see all the puns related to this when Michelle Obama kept wearing sleeveless dresses? I don’t really know how that was deemed newsworthy but it somehow was. 

She has both guns and the right to bare arms

14. They call this # a pound sign- I’ll give you a pound sign, £££££££ THIS is a pound sign.

15. Everything is cheap in America because they don’t have a top-notch public healthcare system like we do.  In the US you have to be a millionaire to get sick. True story. 

Then again, they get Greg House (although tbh he should be ours as Hugh Laurie is a bona fide brit- actually he's fictional, so what do I care?)

16. I don’t actually know that much about America.

I'm not 100% sure if 100% of this is 100% accurate but I hope I've taught y'all something.

Gratuitous Lesbianism

Okay okay, before all of you ladylovers jump down my throat- it is not the intention of this post to be anti-scissorsister or anything, if anything it is pro-lesbianism because I’m trying to strive for equality here.

Today, I am going to be commenting on a device I’m seeing more and more of in modern cinema; the sudden and incongruous instances of straight female characters making out- and it adding nothing or very little to the storyline. I actually somewhat enjoyed all of the films mentioned below, but I think this issue needs to be addressed in each of them. Because I feel there has to be a more sophisticated way to attract male viewers to these films- and that men should really be credited with a little more intelligence.

P.S- as the lesbianism is SO POINTLESS there are actually very few spoilers below, but if you’re dead pernickety I guess that there are indeed spoilers.

1. Jennifer’s Body

I’m aware this film is kind of awful but I sorta liked it as a tongue in cheek horror-comedy.

 Both Jennifer and Needy are portrayed as straight girls throughout the film- neither expresses any interest in homosexuality until about half way through the film when Jennifer breaks into Needy’s bedroom and they make out. The fact that Needy has a boyfriend and Jennifer is a total man-eater is paid no credence and they proceed to have a long, slow, breathy session of tonsil tennis. More screen-time is dedicated to Jen and Needy pashing than any of the real turning points of the plot. Why is it so preposterous to expect a man to want to watch a film with a female character majority without them hooking up? I mean, I’ve watched and enjoyed plenty of man-heavy films with no gay makeouts whatsoever.

2. Black Swan

Black Swan is quite brilliant, and there’s no denying that; so why the sudden lezzing huh?

And is it any co-incidence that, just as in Jennifer’s Body- this takes place in the middle of the film- just as those with a short attention span might be tempted to let their mind wander? I think not. And to be honest, there’s already enough wank fodder in Black Swan without it- it’s a little absurd that it’s included.

3. Cruel Intentions 

This is probably my favourite of the three films, if you haven’t watched it- you totally should.

YET: Cruel Intentions has a legitimate gay sub-plot which actually plays an important role in shaping the main storyline- yet we see no physical man-on-man action, and there is a lot of shame surrounding the whole thing. But again, it is deemed acceptable for a lesbian kissing lesson to take place between two straight characters in a public park.  I am by no means implying that acts of gay love shouldn’t grace the silver screen- but when they do, I think there should be equality between gay men and lesbian women. 

(Though, it did win, and probably deserve the MTV award for best kiss- it was a good'un)

And boys, I’d just like to add (I’m probably screwing up your schoolgirl-themed wetdreams here) but I never learnt to kiss by kissing another girl- it was kind of a dead private kissing the back of your hand kind of thing. And I guess it’s the same for most chicks, sorry.

Love and Marriage

A conversation I’ve had again and again with my female friends almost since we were old enough to talk is about who’d we’d marry and what our wedding’s going to be like. We’ve all been nuptually fixated before we knew what sex was or even realised that boys weren’t actually made of slugs, snails and puppydog tails. 

FYI: this was the most sexist film I've seen released this side of the millennium

And of course, if you’re a brit you’ll know the hype at the moment is all about the new series of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding being shown on Channel 4; so yesterday when I was schmoozing with the girls it all came up again.

I have somewhat complicated views on marriage, as it seems my family has been cursed to divorce ever since it’s been socially acceptable.

Usually, when someone asks me about getting married I tell them that I don’t plan to, and that two people can lead a perfectly happy and healthy relationship without tying the knot.  Anyway, I couldn’t be fussed with the whole buying a wedding dress too small for me and crash dieting myself into it debacle.

HOT!

But secretly, inside I have a crazy yearning to become a character in a Lawrence novel, the downtrodden wife of a miner, living in a two-up, two-down terraced cottage with our four children, who spends all day cooking and washing the family’s linen with a mangle only for my husband to come home from the mine, snatch the jam jar I kept the money for little Louisa’s new hobnail boots in, and go down the pub and spend it all on drink. Later he’d come home and beat me senseless because there were lumps in the custard at dinner.

I’m not sure whether this is a genuine fantasy of mine or just the product of a deep-rooted wish to lead a more literary life- or perhaps it’s just my masochism coming through.

Why is being beaten such an attractive prospect for me?

....sigh

 

drooooool..... 

Also major apologies for lack of updates recently, I promise to write more for y'all when all is calm.

Big love, 

Dollface.