Don't take the bus

I don't even want to write this, but I feel I must.

I don't take the bus very often. It may be vestigial snobbery leftover from living in America, where only Broke Folk take the bus. But I've just been handed an unimpeachable reason to stay off the bus.

Now first, I ought to admit that I am often amused by things many people would find offensive. My favorite comic moment in Gladiator is when Maximus' son gets trampled by a horse. They used a mannequin, and I thought it was farking hilarious.

The woman in front of me in the theatre didn't, and I got one of the biggest Stink Eyes of my life.

Which made me laugh even more.

So let's just say I am not easy to offend or make uncomfortable.

Which is why I am compelled to tell you that if you go on the bus in Hong Kong these days, do not watch the TV.

Why, you ask?

I'll tell you.

There's a commercial that, Chinese language notwithstanding, I can tell is about feminine hygiene.

Let's call itfemale hygiene; feminine hygiene should be used to describe stuff like those powder puffs women use for makeup.

Masculine hygiene, therefore, would be something likeLava, a soap so masculine it has volcanic effluents in it to get you manly manly clean.

This female hygiene ad runs on the bus with alarming frequency. The advert is from Summer's Eveand shows a young woman with an apparent problem.

What kind of problem?

Well, she's apparently feeling (as they used to say in the adverts) not so fresh.

Hey, I'll never be accused of smelling garden fresh.

Especially in this weather.

But I'm genitally ill-equipped to have this kind of... issue.

And allow me to stipulate that I'm not menstrual (or anything else to do with womens' Lovely Bits)-phobic.I have written before about one of God's crueler jokes: womens' genitalia tends to be much higher maintenance than mens'. They have more challenges, considerations, and require more care.

Maybe that's why God gave men the refractory period and not women...

I figure the least I can do is be kind, understanding, and supportive.

Hell, I'm actually more comfortable buying tampons than I am buying condoms.

Though to be fair (and to shamelessly solicit pity), it's been ages since I bought either.

So I'm not skeeved out by the issueat all.That's not the problem.That's not the scary part. It's the depictionof the issue that gets me.

In the commercial, a black cloud hovers around this poor woman's waist and randomly wafts onto unwitting and unfortunate victims.

It looks like one of God's wrathful smite-fests in The Ten Commandments or a trailer for a cheap video game called Stench: The Crotch of Doom.

It's resoundingly disturbing, offensive, degrading, crass, and embarrassing. And that's coming from me.

Who could also be described with those adjectives.

I have to put up with a lot of rude, nasty stuff in my life as it is. I don't need to see this demeaning commercial every ten minutes:

I haven't been this offended since someone asked me if I was going to see Celine Dion.

I'd only go if a huge black cloud obscured her both visually and aurally, and the smell be damned.