Menage A Trois

Mothers of young sons get ready, cuz you will be living this post in precious few years.

I was cleaning the kids' shower this a.m. and happened to look at the back of the bottle of Axe Shampoo that "Santa" put in 9's stocking. (By the way, I'm pretty sure the little Santa believers in this household are convinced that once you reach a certain age, Santa REALLY starts caring about your hygiene. Mr. C and I couldn't think of anything other than shampoo, an electric toothbrush, some deodorants, and dark chocolate for the teenager. We feel terrible, but what are you supposed to fill a 13 year old boys' stocking with? Oh, and we may as well just have put a box of Stridex Pads in there too. Chocolate? What were we thinking?)

Anyway.

As I was saying, I was cleaning the shower when I happened to look at the back of the Axe Shampoo bottle. Now, I'm going to venture a guess and say that 9 has been using Axe products for around 2 years now. At least that's how long my hallway has been reeking on school mornings of thick, cloying, "teenage boy trying to smell like a man" smell. This smell sticks for a good two hours after he's left for school, and it's not just him who uses it. As far as I can tell, it's the entire population of Middle School boys. When he has friends over, it's like someone has fumigated our house with the stuff.
Disgusting, but kind of cute (in a sad, hopeless, middle school boy kind of way).

So for the first time in at least a couple of years, I happened to look at the back of the Axe bottle. And this is what I saw:


And here's how my train of thought went:
"What the...? Is that a dude in a shower with 2 chicks? Yes! That's a dude showering with 2 chicks! What are these advertisers thinking? Don't they know their market? Twelve and thirteen year old boys are showering with this! EW! 9 has been showering with this! Oh god, I am SO putting on rubber gloves to finish cleaning this shower. What kind of pressure is that to be putting on teenage boys? 9 and his friends wouldn't think that's okay, right? No. I'm pretty sure 9 would be terrified if he found himself in that situation at this point in his life. Gross. Okay, NOT thinking about that. I'm going to write the advertisers a letter and give them a piece of my mind. But first, I'm going to show Mr. C cuz it is kinda funny too."

I showed it to Mr. C, half laughing and saying "You're not going to believe this." He took a good look at it, smiled, shrugged, and said, "What? Typical advertising. They know their market."
There I stood, mouth agape and totally aghast at the many moral miles that separated my husband and I. How were we even going to raise children together?
"So you think this is okay?" I squeaked.
He looked at me for a moment. " It's just saying that if you shower with this stuff girls will be all over you. What's so wrong with that?"
I looked again at the bottle. Oh. Darn it. He was right. I totally read the picture wrong. Now this, this made more sense. Middle school boys are not emotionally mature enough to handle a shower menage-a-trois, but they are exactly emotionally mature enough to believe that if they use this product, ladies would line up down the block for them. They'd swim laps in the stuff if they thought it would help.
So I replaced the bottle of Axe, happy in my knowing that the silhouette of the man and two ladies on the back of the bottle were supposed to be fully clothed in public and not naked juveniles in some steamy shower scene. Whew.
He's only 13 and I'm already exhausted.

Happy New Year to you all! Have a good night!