A few weeks ago the cargo-sized vessel of tampons I'd purchased at Costco had---shockingly!--run out. I sent my husband to the store with specific directions and a color-coded map.
He called me a few minutes later. "What does the box look like again?"
"A blue box with a yellow stripe. LOOK.FOR.THE.YELLOW.STRIPE!" I felt like I was giving morse code for some super-classified, high-level, undercover ops. Undercover. Heh. Indeed.
"Yellow stripe, yellow stripe," he intoned and I imagined him ticking down the Feminine Hygiene aisle scanning the plethora of flowery boxes.
"GOT IT!" he crowed. "Wait. Regular? What does that mean?"
"Yes, regular," I said. "That means Regular sized tampons. Or Regulier if we're speaking French."
Because you know tampon boxes always advertise their wares in like three different languages. So helpful.
"Don't forget I need pantiliners, too," I reminded him.
"Yeah, I got those already. The box with the red flower on front, right?"
"Indeed."
Later, I was re-arranging my toiletry cabinet and suddenly noticed, like, how downright weird the pantiliner box was.
I mean, I never noticed before. I'm more of a HEY LOOK, IT'S THE RED FLOWER BOX and I grab it off the shelf. But have you ever really looked at a pantiliner box? Let's ponder this. Take for instance, the bar-code side of the box:
Yes, friends. Not only does Kotex offer IMPROVED PROTECTION! and AMAZING COMFORT! but it also offers Latin lessons.
That red flower on their box? It's not just a Lily, you know. It's Clivia Miniata. Which makes it sound so much longer and, I dunno, important. Because in Latin, everything has more gravitas. You take a simple, 2 syllable word like Lily and suddenly, in Latin, it's practically a paragraph.
Talk about bang for your buck-itas.
Moving on. The Lily, the folks at Kotex tells us, is "symbolic of three qualities: majesty, purity and splendid beauty."
BECAUSE THAT'S EXACTLY HOW I FEEL WHEN I'M ON THE RAG!
There's nothing like my period to make me feel majestic, pure and pretty much bursting with splendid beauty.
Dear Kotex, you picked the wrong botanical. Try a Venus Fly-Trap next time. That'd be closer to the truth.
Now, when you look at the other side of the box, you discover the various fits and sizes of pantiliners Kotex has to offer. Because Kotex, you see, has "a le produit qui repond a vos besoins" which translated into boring English means: products to fit your individual needs.
Dude, I hate how everything sounds so unsexy in English.
But I'll tell you what's more unsexy: pantiliners for THONGS. Yeah. Chew on that for a moment. Kotex offers THONG pantiliners. I'm sorry, but that just freaks me out.
Who wears a thong while she's on her period? Am I missing out on some super fun times women are having while they're menstruating? I guess I just assumed that every gal had her Period Underwear and her Pretty Underwear. Am I totally uninformed, here?
I mean, yeah, I do enjoy a pretty thong, but you couldn't PAY ME to wear my pretty thong with a thong pantiliner--not even if Kotex promises it has BONNE (good) coverage. Or buena cobertura if you speak Spanish. Oh, yeah. Kotex definitely se habla espanol. Don't tell Arizona.
Which begs the question, if the purpose of a thong is SANS coverage, how can a thong pantiliner promise BUENA coverage?
So, not only is the pantiliner box weird, it's also totally oxymoronic.
Now that's ettonnant.
Or as we unsexy English speakers say: uh-mazing.
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