Carol’s Column

Be happy you're born a woman

NOTHING has changed the course of history more than the humble advertisment. The one that transforms your lifestyle, revs up the pace, induces you to buy, buy and buy and makes you the person you'd like to be if you could afford it.

I mean, would you dream of sending your husband off to work without a tingle-tongue taste, with unflossed teeth, with body odour, in a shirt that wasn't soft and fresh and clean not to mention a constipated stomach that had been helped in the most gentle, natural way with bran flakes and added roughage and multi-vitamins.

Each day you wave him goodbye in his executive-style car with the economy fuel consumption after spraying the engine with Visco-Static Anti-Freeze. You spray Long-Life on the tyres and watch them roll away for yet another 100 000 happy, trouble-free kilometres.

Life must have been tough in the old days. In the days when dirt was dirt, BO was BO and teeth didn't dazzle, sparkle, gleam or glitter. They just plain withered.

Take my husband for example — not that you would had he not sprayed his armpit area with Nice-To-Be-Near, revitalised his head of hair with Hairgrow and dusted his feet with anti-fungicidal, anti-bacterial, anti-pong foot powder with the yellow label for added strength.

"You know," he said as we lay cuddled together under our allergy-free, hygienically-sterilised duvet with the drip-dry, never-fade-or-shrink reversible covers, "we're a large family, we need a toothpaste that serves all our needs."

"One with blue-gel to give us extra confidence, a green stripe for freshness, a cleansing paste to really get off the ingrained dirt and grime, fluoride to strengthen the fangs and fight plaque and tooth decay all day and lastly — it should have a natural grape flavour."

I agreed. But try to find such a toothpaste. For weeks I searched the supermarkets for one product that would incorporate everything we, as a family, needed for our early-morning dental ablutions.

And then my spouse phoned from New York, during a business trip overseas, where he'd flown swiftly, silently and serenely being waited upon by the airhostesses who attend to your every whim.

I could hear he was happy. "Listen, I've got it, I've got it, the toothpaste that serves our family's entire needs. I found it at Bloomingdales after three hours of searching. A contact I met on the flight here gave me a hot tip. As soon as I touched down, I took a taxi to Bloomingdales and voila!

"I've airfreighted it express-rate, registered and special delivery. You should receive it today or tomorrow."

It's little gestures like this that make the world go round.

On Monday morning after I'd packed the kids' school lunches of Hum Drum Yum drumsticks with the spicey flavouring, I shut the front door with its fool-proof, thief-proof, shatter-free, titanium lock and waltzed into the kitchen.

I divided the mound of washing into 32 smaller piles prior to placing it into my load it, leave it, live-a-little washing machine.

My friend Betty popped in for a slim-line glass of skim milk.

"How about a shape-suit grapefruit?" I warned as she sat down on my gentle scoured without abrasives cleaned chair.

I passed her the shape-suit grapefruit and noticed she looked distinctly glowing.

Was it a new lover that was bringing that pink-tinged glow to her cheeks?

"You'll never guess what I've just discovered?" she said shyly.

"Tell me, tell me."

"Well, this morning I was feeling terribly depressed because of the imbalance in my biorhythms, so I jumped into my little lace bra — the one that makes me the woman I am today, the one that gives me the figure I had when I was 19, before I had a husband and three kids.

She paused.

"And then I thought I'd brighten up my day by popping along to the local supermarket. Well, what do you think I found there?"

I couldn't wait to hear.

"I discovered the dinkiest, most dazzling foaming, germ-chasing toilet cleaner with a million little scented cleansing bubbles that release and activate the concentrated magic that purifies, deodorises and leaves your loo smelling like a spring morning.

"Mind you, it took a while to choose between the pine, rose and lemon fragrance."

I was astounded. Some people have all the luck. All I had to clean the toilet was good old Thingpic granules.

My friend Gertrude, who was in the process of a torrid divorce, phoned to say she'd seen an advertisment for a new sex aid, called a Van Dyck, the advertisment had stated: "The path to pleasure is carpeted with Van Dyck".

"It's extraordinary what you can pick up when you least expect it," she said excitedly.

Too true. Why only later that day, I saw an advertisment in a glossy that said: "It's time your stomach got educated." It continued ". . . if your stomach's grown into the habit of eating several large meals a day, it needs to be educated to expect less."

I immediately enrolled my stomach for a post graduate course in intestinology at the University of the Witwatersrand.

In the same magazine, I noticed another advertisment for some "super vitamins that promise to put zing in your swing."

Then there was the advertisment showing a dreamy-looking elegant woman in cashmere and pearls — it said: "Kotex understands when you sometimes wonder why you were born a woman" not to mention "Stretch — the toothbrush that helps prevent cavities". I immediately sent off for 100 packs of each.

Bulk offers were half price.

Only this morning the postman arrived with an enormous parcel.

I couldn't wait to open it. Out fell 100 gaily-wrapped packets each with the message: "Be happy you were born a woman".

Full of expectation, I opened one of the little boxes.

Good grief. Where on earth will I put 1 200 tampons.

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