cliterature

I have written before about the coyness of advertising when it relates to products–in particular vibrators and menstrual products.  One advertising company has found an alternative to the ubiquitous advertisements for sanitary pads that demonstrate absorbent capacities with a very unprepossessing blue liquid.  Which is, I suppose, as very sensible.  Blood and tissue outside the body is not something most people want to look at on a casual basis halfway through and episode of the Simpsons or on the side of a bus stop.  (Advertising of Dexter aside and other ’splatter-lite’ media aside, not tome mention some of that Halloween paraphernalia…. but I digress).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxkUE5TtOFQ

One advertiser in Australia came up with a slightly more distinctive approach by using the pretty widespread understanding of ‘beaver’as referring to the female genital area.  In many countries it is more of a derogatory reference used by men but in Australia it is used more by women and is a more neutral euphemism like Oprah and her ‘vijayjay‘.  In this TV  advertisement a women, clearly on friendly terms with her beaver, takes good care of it.  Apparently this ad still provoked quite a number of complaints–which just suggests to me that some people need something better to do with their time.  This second ad gets just a little more literal and strikes me as a tad bizarre, but hardly upsetting.  And there are a few others than can be found on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6tNrZSF4j8

In my erotica writing I have learned that there really is no noun relating to female genitals that is not going to insult some people and look silly to others. I tend to skirt (so to speak) around the issue hopefully without be too obvious about–by avoiding ‘nouning’ the area at all. The vagina and pudenda are pieces of anatomy in search of an unemotive nouns appropriate for use outside of the medical arena. But frankly, until wider society is ably to think about genitals(and to some extent breasts) as body parts that spend the vast majority of their time just being there (not getting up to an salacious activities) I doubt that an innocuous noun is going to emerge.  Thus we are left to make do with allusions to the national animal if Canada. Which is all very well for the good people at Kotex Australia, but I imagine anyone who works in a job that relates to beavers (the animal) is pretty tired of how easily amused some people are by the mere mention of any kind of euphemism (shades of Mrs. Slocombe’s “pussy”–a joke that the audience apparently never got tired of).  But more about that next week (yes, that women’s sexuality and cats post I keep promising).

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