Are you offended by a tampon ad with a beaver?

She's just another woman on the go with an animatronic symbol of her genitalia. Gotta love those feminine hygiene commercials!

Published March 14, 2008 7:20PM (EDT)

We're a little late to this, but any news story involving euphemisms for female genitalia deserves a large window of opportunity for discussion. So, there is an Australian tampon ad featuring a woman and a stuffed beaver. The pair get mani-pedis and go to the beach, and at the end of the spot, the woman hands the beaver a box of tampons. ("You've only got one," the ad says. "So for the ultimate care down there, make it U.") Now, I'm no James Joyce scholar, but I feel like there's a double meaning here.

The ad has proved controversial down under, where it has received so many complaints that, according to this story, the ad might be pulled. So are you offended? Personally, I am not. Do I think it's a dumb commercial? I do. Do I want to get a mani-pedi with an adorable stuffed beaver now? Yes, maybe, kinda. It looks kind of fun.

The above article is also worth mentioning for including the kind of statistics we find sadly lacking in most stale news items:

"Kotex research found people in that age group [18-to-24-year-old women] had 181 alternative names for the vagina and 94 per cent said they used nicknames for their own genitals. [Ed. note: !!!!]

The term 'beaver' was the 11th-most used by the people surveyed."


By Sarah Hepola

Sarah Hepola is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, "Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget."

MORE FROM Sarah Hepola


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