Men – the advertiser’s lost continent

The other day in the supermarket I came across men’s bread. Men’s bread? Yes, you heard right. This men’s bread has selenium and zinc infused through its fluffy white core to meet men’s special dietary needs. What, so now men have needs? I mean, really.

Advertisers have only recently discovered Planet Bloke. While they were busy making women feel inadequate, messed-up and deeply dysfunctional by inventing new products to meet women’s special needs – we’re talking breads, sunscreens, milk, breakfast cereals and chocolate – men have been happily ploughing on, oblivious that they are in desperate need of their own special products. Now that advertisers have screwed up women – hello boys! It must be the advertising equivalent of discovering the new world – half the world’s population, ripe for exploitation.

Enter men’s cosmetics, bread, breakfast cereal and milk. After that who knows? Will it be toilet paper, special male-order vegemite, bloke blocks of cheese and male mixed fruits and nuts?

Why should I care? If advertisers are now messing with men’s heads, making them insecure, self-doubting and confused, that’s got to balance  the books a little, don’t you think? Men who think before they buy and take an interest in their own health, what’s not to like? 

So why does it leave a yukky taste?

Advertisement

When they call you darl – watch out (the lowdown on hospitals)

Having spent a bit of time around hospitals lately, here’s what I learned about our state-of-the-art health system.

The only way to handle hospitals is to be well when you enter – you need to be essentially well when you come in. Ok, you can have something nice and straightforward, like a broken finger, but you need to a healthy specimen to survive hospital – preferably well enough to go home and think about acupuncture or throat singing as a viable health alternative. The trouble with being sick is that hospitals can take control. They’ll dress you in their clothes, shuttle you off for all sorts of scans, prods, biopsies and radiation, which will take around 3 weeks to complete then another 3 weeks to get the results. By which time you will have lost your mind.

Grumpy old nurses

I hate to sound fattists (ok, not really – I’m officially outed as a fattist) but generally speaking the fatter, older and nurse is the more mean they are. Don’t get me wrong – most nurses are as nice as can be, but there are exceptions.

There’s something about nursing that attracts a small psychomental proportion of people who enjoy saying: “No, you can’t watch television today, doctor said no”. Or “You can’t go outside and enjoy sunshine and fresh air for a few minutes, because doctor said no”. Real passive aggressive stuff. Why don’t they say ” I have nothing but this bloody hospital in my life, and because I have no cat I’m going to take it out on you”.

Nice, hot doctors are only on TV

Yes, it’s true. The doctors I came across had the bedside manner of a turnip and didn’t look a bit like those shiny happy doctors on Grey’s Anatomy. Plus they don’t seem to do any actual work. All they do is read reports and zap in for 2.5 nano seconds and say “We’re waiting for results”. After 3 weeks of this, a different doctor will pop in and say “We’re all working very hard on this case, we’re all discussing it”. “You’re a complicated case” – that’s another classic. It means we haven’t the foggiest and you’d be better off getting the South American Tonka Tribe in and sacrifice a chicken. 

Make friends with the kitchen

If possible get their direct line. then you can control what you eat. I know doctor said liquid diet, but ice cream counts right?

When they call you darl – watch out

When doctors, nurses, anaesthetist start calling you darl, sweetie or hon – watch out. They have something very horrible up their sleeve, a 2am enema, a cardboard and jelly diet or a drip of radioactive nuclear saline. If they call you darl, grab the zimmer frame and run …