Begins and Ends with Fatberg

[rinue]

Me: fatberg! http://www.ediblegeography.com/sewer-watch/

Ciro: Horrifying

Me: I like that wet wipes are in there as a big problem! I had no idea, but it makes sense: they are cloth/filters that don't break down when wet and occasionally impregnated with solvents.

PS a lot of commercials on now trying to say that you should use wet wipes along with toilet paper every time you go to the bathroom, in a shameless attempt to make women buy more wet wipes. (All these ads targeted at women.)

Very douchey.

Ciro: Guh. Muh.

Me: Normally they involve one woman shaming another woman, being let down because the toilet isn't properly stocked. Oh you bad hostess, bad, horrible person.

I have literally never known anyone who uses wet wipes in this way, or if they do they are doing it extra sneaky

but I guess people are doing it extra sneaky! because fatberg

Comments

[adrian_turtle]

I know a lot of parents who use the wet wipes for small children who are mostly toilet-trained. I'm told they're really useful that way.

[movingfinger]

Yes, the busy baby-changing parent on the go was the original market for these things, but the marketing monster is never satisfied, and of course for some reason it is perfectly acceptable to run television advertising telling women that they are unclean, unhygienic, and incompetent at wiping their own bottoms.

I have yet to see an ad of this kind targeting uncircumcised men.

[rinue]

Indeed. I keep returning to Mitchell and Webb's sadly perfect satire. Never gets old! And yet I really want it to get old.

[rinue]

Different context. Wet wipes have been used for diapering and potty training for ages and are sold in the diaper aisle (and usually disposed of in the trash and not the toilet, although I'm sure there are exceptions). Wet wipes are definitely useful things in various contexts. However, I'm talking about wet wipes recently being packaged differently and sold aggressively as a product for adult women, and presented in a way that suggests that to not use them every time you pee is abnormal and/or abusive to your and your lady guests' genitals.

Although I imagine there are times when they are useful and people for whom they are useful (and obviously there are, because there are wet wipes making their way into the sewage system), these ads are asserting a social norm that does not as far as I know exist (and using them to shame women into buying stuff to feel "clean" - hence my saying it's douchey).

Yet it could be me who is wrong. It is interesting to contemplate what adults do in their own bathrooms; I have a general curiosity about it and about hygene habits in a way that is not so much judgemental as analogous to the way other people are curious about the sex other people are having (or not having).