I went to buy shower soap the other day. Most shower soap is marketed for women, and smells like fruit, flowers, herbs, or some combination thereof. I could get ones that smelled like pomegranate-tea tree or peach-ginger blossom, or vanilla cherry. But I don’t want to smell like food, so I went to the men’s section.
It’s nice that men’s lib has come far enough that they now have cleansing products marketed just for them. After flipping all the caps, I found one that smelled like Abercrombie and Fitch. It promised that it had pheremones that would make me more attractive, presumably to straight women and gay men. That’s okay. I like the company of straight women and gay men.
I took it to the gym the next day, and as I read the package in the shower, I was kind of laughing at the idea of soap being divided by gender. Don’t we all need to be clean? What on earth could make this soap masculine? Isn’t soap genderless?
Then I squeezed some into my hand. It was blood red, and had a sticky texture slightly reminiscent of semen.
Okay. I admit. That’s pretty masculine.
