"Shop by anxiety zone"

That's what the front page of Lands' End says right now. Can you imagine them selling men's suits that way? "Shop by anxiety zone", indeed. They don't even pretend that women enjoy buying swimsuits. It's kinda funny.

That reminds me of an awful commercial I saw some years ago (men, stop reading now before it's too late!) for Tampax. It has a high school girl explaining that she had been too nervous to try a tampon, but then her college-aged older sister visited home and said, "You're still using pads?" For a second the younger sister looks directly into the camera, imitating her older sister's patronizing, you-need-to-grow-up expression. (I remember feeling vaguely guilty and very irritated by the stare.) So then, the younger sister tells us, she tried tampons and they were so easy and you should do it too. Yes, the whole goal of the commercial was to shame women into buying the product. If you're not using Tampax, you're just a frightened high school girl!

I don't normally go all feminist on things, but on that occasion I wished the whole world would boycott Tampax into bankruptcy. Or at least fire the idiots who pitched that commercial.