Are men’s pubes so different to women’s?

Driving out of the car park of her local supermarket that afternoon an ad came on the radio about a TV show airing later addressing the contentious topic of a person's right to die. Peppered with intervals of dramatic music and snatched quotes from presenters ping-ponging around opinions on the subject, this show was to be found that night on Fox 5. She snorted! How was a far-right Christian-skewed channel going to be able to objectively discuss something like aided suicide? She had once watched a lively discussion on that channel about gay characters being portrayed in the Disney cartoon Strange World, the general consensus being how dare they foul young minds so early on. She had seen that cartoon and had loved the light portrayal of two young male teenagers with giggling crushes on each other. Like wise she appreciated that her children got to see gay love being as normal as any of the other heterosexual relationships. From the reaction seen on the show though, parents leaving cinemas and demanding refunds, you would have thought young innocents had been subjected to watching hardened men with two-day-old stubble go at it while their kids choked on, this movie made me gay, popcorn! Of the 5 overly coiffed commentators, not one of them dared to play devil's advocate, throwing in the possible idea that perhaps just by doing this it made being gay part of the human experience, thus helping to negate the fear, hate and prejudice that grows in the secrecy of denial and damnation. Not even the overtly gay presenter waved his rainbow flag in support of the film, his internalized homophobia strangling quiet any possible opinion that representation is important for little ones.

The right-to-die ad was quickly followed by a Gillette Intimates for Men commercial. A razor for those gentlemen wanting to shave their pubic area. She wondered what an intimate razor looked like, how it differed from a regular one and more specifically why did men get their own, was it shaped to fit around the penis? Were male pubes so different from women’s?

What a strange couple of back-to-back ads, she thought, as she drove up to the stop light in her Subaru, pulling up behind an oversized pickup truck with a big NRA sticker on its bumper and vote Republican plastered to its doors.