Pls explain your charming toliet paper rant. I am very confused
Haha, sorry, that was auto-correct on my phone changing Charmin to charming. But anyway, I shall explain:
I had ADHD as a child (may possibly still but whatever) and I was horrible to bring into a store. My poor mother has dealt with me for a very long time, heaven help her. So I don’t know if I still have it or I’ve just learned to be this way in stores, but whenever I walk into a store I very quickly get entranced in whatever I see first.
Today’s shopping trip focus went from: a display of vases and jars as we entered the store, a stuffed lion on a rack immediately after, a beer called Fat Tire, a series of colorful cups meant for toddlers, paper plates with pretty colors, a unicorn toy meant for a dog I wanted to buy for my cats, and, immediately after that, we were in the toilet paper aisle.
While dwindling on the contrast of Brawny with all the brands depicting babies, we arrived at Charmin, where I was able to peruse the various types of softnesses they offered, and I noticed something.
The soft and ultra-soft brands both had pictures of the girl bears (lighter fur, adorned with pink bows) and the ultra-strong brand only had the boy bears (darker coats, no bows).
Now, I should let you know that this morning alone I went on two separate rants about the patriarchy and/or capitalism (one about pockets and another about monetizing the self-esteem of people (mainly women)) so this wasn’t exactly out of character for me.
So, without prompting, I started to rant about the ridiculousness of gendering toilet paper types and how the significance not only of women being and liking softness is being reiterated here, but the perpetuation of men only being able to like “strong” and “tough” things while excluding them from enjoying softer and more comfortable things for the sake of masculinity is ridiculous and damaging to the male psyche and likely contributes to the deterioration of mental health and issues surrounding men’s ability to connect with their own emotions.
…
It was fucking toilet paper.
I did mention I get a bit off track sometimes, yes? And while the very nice man who helped me set up my bank account this morning generously pretended as if he couldn’t hear me repeat a well-loved rant about the size of pockets in women’s clothing being a method of the patriarchy/capitalism to make women vulnerable I recited to my long-suffering mother in the next seat, the man further down the paper products aisle from us just trying to buy paper towels did not afford me the same luxury.
So I got some weird looks in the grocery store and that was before my two minute long argument on why my mother should’ve let me get Spider-man cheese sticks.
Yeah. I don’t leave the house much.
