Turkeynecks And Dyeing Men

© 2008 Stan Spire


Women are big suckers for cosmetic crap.

TeeVee is littered with ads and infomercials for various skin products that are supposed to erase any signs of aging for women getting long in the tooth. A spokeswoman – usually some over-the-hill actress – will go on about how her facial product will make any hag look like a teenager.

Of course, the spokeswoman does look young for her age. But with the same make-up and special lighting and camera filters and plastic surgery to boot, a trilobite would look sexier and younger.

If you pay attention, check out the spokeswoman’s saggy, wrinkly neck. No flaws with her face; they all moved down into her throat area. (Better stay out of the woods during turkey hunting season.)

Well, at least one spokeswoman is smart enough to cover up her gobbler skin with an array of sparkling jewelry hanging around her neck.

Men are big suckers for cosmetic crap.

Got some gray on top of your head? Cover it up with this product. No one will notice.

“Joe, you look different but I can’t figure it out. Did you lose some weight?”

Naw, Joe just flooded his scalp with black dye. Overnight his salt and pepper hair has disappeared. Now he looks like a middle-aged chump with shoe polish saturating his follicles.

When this gray-covering crap first appeared on the market, the manufacturer had to deal with the stigma of men using dye like age-worried women. There was something – well, unmanly about it. So the TeeVee ads would stress that product would be found at most drugstores in THE MENS SECTION. The announcer’s deep voice would reassure the male viewer that real men do use hair dye. After all, it was being sold in THE MENS SECTION. Why, you would go to that particular aisle and see beefy lumberjacks and pro football players buying the stuff.

In fact one recent commercial uses the he-man sports angle to hawk hair dye to men. Two guys carry on like sportscasters, following the “game” of a graybeard trying to score in a singles bar with a younger woman, a luscious blonde. But she’s turned off by the graybeard’s lack of completely dark hair.

So the scene is played again but this time, note the sportscasters, the graybeard is now a blackbeard (while remaining a bluebeard through it all.) The woman responds to his advance and blackbeard goes home with her. The two sportscasters follow the couple to an apartment house, standing outside with their mikes, proclaiming the man has “scored.” The commercial ends with the two sportscasters lurking outside the apartment window, two losers hanging around for the “color commentary.”

And married men are also targeted. There’s this “cute” TeeVee ad featuring two young girls bugging their father to hide any natural signs of aging. The girls want him to use a special product from THE MENS SECTION. They’re so happy when their father gives in. Even Mom is happy. Her female offspring pussywhipped her husband into doing some silly, proving what she has always suspected: Dad ain’t a real man.

Mom applies her age-defying facial lotion and touches up her hair dye. It’s time to trawl for a stud.