Hawaiian Reeves

Fat Tuesday is winding to a close, and unfortunately, Hawaiian has yet to earn his beads.

Which would be sad if I were Catholic, not single, or had any idea what to do with the beads themselves, but that’s simply not the case.  My parents are baptists, I haven’t uttered the word “boyfriend” in a self-referential way since last century, and my mother would tell you that beads are for whores and children, which is why my uncle’s wife fights with her kids over who gets to keep them.

Normally, I’m a fan of excess in moderation, but this is one holiday I just don’t get.  Maybe that’s because I don’t need to drink, stay up late, and turn to strangers for affirmation in order to enjoy myself.  Or maybe it’s I also because I wouldn’t give up enjoying myself for 40 days for some arbitrary reason.  I mean, I’ve given up things I enjoyed for Lent before, but that’s only because the guy I was seeing at the time made that decision for me, so I had to give him up permanently.  Of course, he started making up for Lent the day after Easter, while I, on the other hand, am still waiting for a supersized basket of goodness that has yet to arrive.

These days, my only real form of excess is TV, but even now I’m surfing channels less vigorously than I used to.  I think in part it’s because I’m outgrowing the programming, but perhaps just as telling is the fact that I’m so turned off by what happens in between the programming that it’s difficult to leave my television turned on.  If I’ve stopped calling my mother because I have no idea what to expect on the other end, then maybe it makes sense that I should abandon my TV because I’m truly afraid of the commercials.  I realize most of you have TiVo and don’t face this particular problem, but if you fall into that category, let me give you a little hint of what you’ve been missing.  These three are easily some of the worst commercials I’ve seen in a long, long time…

Relacore…

I know that fat people need hope in a bottle, and I know that they need it to be offered to them all day long and on every channel imaginable, but what they don’t need is odd-looking women with southern newscaster hairstyles yelling at them about the Relacore breakthrough.  And what bothers me most about these ads?  The phrase “If you’re seriously overweight, you’ve probably seen this commercial.”

Why is that, exactly? Because their sleep apnea keeps them up all night?  Because fat people love Bravo and reruns of the X-Files?  Why does their weight make them more likely to see this commercial?  And if someone could please explain it to me, why is Relacore only for the “serious dieter” but the drug of which it is supposed to be the generic formula is now a “feel-good pill” for anxious brides and overworked teachers?  What happens if you consider yourself “Flabulous” but still want a pill tomake you feel good?  What happens then?

Curves…

For the record, I’m glad that women have their own gym.  I frankly hate when the attention-starved lesbian in my gym purposely stands in the spot mostly likely to cause a traffic jam and then uses the 3-lb free weights in the most awkward way I can imagine to do God knows what.  I’m not sure what her real end goal is when she goes to the gym, but I do know that it has absolutely nothing to do with changing the shape of her body.

And honestly, I thought the old Curves ads were bad enough…  the ones where women stood up as if they were in an AA meeting and gave testimonials about how Curves had empowered him.  Of course, the new commercials don’t allow the women to talk at all.  Now you just see them laughing and sweating and supporting each other while upbeat music plays.  Can anyone tell me what that music is?  Let me give you a Hawaiian-sized hint…  it’s a little Cher song called “A Song for the Lonely.”

That’s a great message, isn’t it?  Because maybe there isn’t anyone who loves you, but for 30 minutes a day you  can run around equipment with other women who also aren’t loved.  And maybe that whole pneumatic circuit thing doesn’t really work all that well if you’ve ever exercised AT ALL, but at least for that 30 minutes, none of you has to be alone.

and finally, that which upsets me the most…

RepHresh…

And yes, this picture is from the repHresh website…

I need to be upfront and very clear about something before discussing this product:  Despite being a gay man, I am and always have been a fan and supporter of the vagina. I really am.  In high school I subjected an unreceptive Biology class to a presentation on the importance of the pap smear, and in college, I actually hosted viewings of the Instead infomercial.  For those unfamiliar, Instead is an alternative to traditional methods of dealing with menstruation and was, frankly, a bit tough to watch, especially when the early users said things about the product like “It’s a little messy, but you can wash your hands.”  According to that very infomercial, the “best thing” about Instead was that you could have “clean, comfortable sex while wearing it.”  Not good sex maybe, but clean and comfortable.  I bring this up only as proof that I really, truly, am a friend of the vagina and those who have them.

repHresh, on the other hand, makes me cringe.  I really, truly, don’t need all of the causes, problems, and embarrassments of vaginal odor to be discussed in the middle of Will & Grace.  I don’t need to understand that the only thing worse than the week of your period can often be the week after.  And I don’t need to know how you deal with that.  I was fine living in a world where things sometimes were simply “not so fresh” and it could be treated with some mysterious thing that smelled like baby powder that left both the world and the woman in a better place.

But no, now we need total honesty about these things.  Complete transparency about a subject I’d rather leave covered.  And what’s worse is that this could mark the beginning of men retaliating and detailing all of the reasons they need creams and powders and sprays, and what happens when they don’t use them.  This is probably the worst time in the world to use any sort of “finger in the dyke” metaphor, but let me just say now that when men eventually feel comfortable enough to whip out their jock itch conversations at the dinner table, the world while finally realize just how much the supposedly odorless repHresh truly stinks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 11:26 pm and is filed under TV, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.