Okay, here I am tirelessly slaving away to keep the Blues’ Society & Glamour classification pertinent, while you people fritter away time with discussions about social justice and Troy King’s execution fetish. I guess somebody has to do the hard work.
This afternoon I was amused by:
Gain Laundry Detergent (and for God’s sake don’t choose the flash version of the page, you’ll be there all night listening to what sounds like Herb Alpert and watching dancing detergent bottles). Okay, I’ll admit the whole idea of fragrance in laundry detergent bothers me. I love the new emphasis on the olfactory in cleaning products, and the house is full of Method stuff and other goodies that give me a little happy nose boost as I clean (on the occasions when that occurs). But laundry detergent smell is meant to stay in the clothes. Remember that commercial when the family couldn’t tell if the towels were clean without smelling them? They’d sniff a suspect towel and then gag with disgust, and all was chaos and discord until Mom started washing with the product being advertised. Then they could “smell the clean” or something like that. The commercial ended with them all huffing the clean towels in rapturous delight. And thus was ushered in decades of competing odiferous laundry detergents that, when combined with Axe shower spray, Bath & Body Works fruity colognes, and other scents teenagers apply heavily, is enough to fell an ox, or at least a middle school teacher who suffers from allergies. The names of these things started out kind of normal, but now—all right. This is the Gain lineup: Fresh Awakenings, Island Fresh, Outdoor Sunshine, Touch of Softness Simply Fresh, Touch of Softness Cotton Fresh, and then—and this is what made me laugh—the “Joyful Expressions” trio: Apple Mango Tango, Gardenia Delight, and Mandarin Lime Fusion. Hoo, boy! You wouldn’t even need the Bath and Body Works fragrance layer! (And of course there’s still good old Original Fresh, “the same great scent you fell in love with.”) Joyful expressions? Who is doing the expressing? Is it Proctor & Gamble, expressing their joy at selling all this detergent? The housewife or busy working mother (working “outside the home,” I mean) expressing her joy as she bends over yet another load, having realized at ten p.m. that her kids don’t have clean uniform shirts for the next day? She really does need Mango Tango, because that particular joy is difficult to express with mere four-letter words.
The other thing that made me laugh was a big stack of breast cancer chicken. Valley Fresh has joined with the many other products boasting pink ribbons and promising to contribute part of their profits to the Search for the Cure. Not content with a discreet pink ribbon somewhere on the back of the label, they have plastered the can with so much pinkness that it actually looks as though they’re selling breast cancer in a can, like that old joke about the jar with the picture of the baby on it.
I felt a little surly to be so irritated by yet another product waving pink ribbons at me, so I did a little wiki research and found out I’m not the only one. There is a term for this: “pinkwashing.” Think Before You Pink sums it up: “Pinkwashing” is a term used critically of corporate campaigns and practices in which the sponsoring companies position themselves as leaders in the struggle to eradicate breast cancer while engaging in practices that may be contributing to rising rates of the disease. They point out that many of the companies, e.g. cosmetic manufacturers, who are touting their contribution to breast cancer awareness are also selling products containing chemicals that may be contributing to the rising rate of the disease. Okay, not canned chicken. But still. Here’s another sample: How much money actually goes to the cause? For instance, Yoplait donates ten cents for every pink yogurt lid mailed back to the company. American Express has given one cent per purchase (of any amount), meaning a shopper would have to make 100 purchases to raise one dollar for the cause. In some cases it seems to make more sense to write a check directly to a breast cancer organization instead. Check out their website.
NB: My biological mother died of breast cancer. She decided to contact me when she was diagnosed, and died five years after we met. I’m as anxious as anybody else to find “the cure.”
“Fresh Awakenings” sounds like a good name for a line of romance novels. Or maybe soft porn. And the only time I have a Joyful Expression about laundry is when it’s done, which is never, so I guess I never do.