Women Have Vaginas. Deal With It.

Now that I have the attention of every straight male among my Twitter and Facebook following…

Say you make tampons and want to advertise on TV. Good luck, if you’re advertising in the U.S. Because of America’s fear of the female anatomy, hoo-ha’s and “it”, TV networks ban most euphanisms like “down there”, too.

For years, advertising for tampons and “sanitary products” have been shrouded in nebulous euphemism. So what happens when a US tampon-maker drops the coy messaging and goes straight for the jugular (so to speak)? Its ad gets banned by the major US television networks for mentioning the word “vagina”.

Even when the company substituted “down there” for vagina, two of the networks still wouldn’t run the ad, so the company was forced to drop the idea altogether. That provoked Amanda Hess, author of The Sexist blog, to observe: “Now, the commercial contains no direct references to female genitalia – you know, the place where the fucking tampon goes.”

Google Chrome’s U.K. Ad Campaign

Unlike the States, I’m under the impression that the browser wars in the U.K. are a little more, uh, even. Google Chrome, which is Google’s web browser that is gaining a quick bit of popularity (they do have some prime advertising space, namely, google.com) has a new advertising campaign. Without a single word spoken, their video is really, really clever:

Most Uncomfortable Microsoft Ad Ever

That Windows 7 party sounds like a lot of work.