DeodeRANT

I sweat. It happens more often than I’d like, and quite honestly, in more amounts than I’d like. I wouldn’t mind so much, but it tends to leave pit stains, something I’d prefer to avoid, on the job as a salesman and especially at parties surrounded by friends or, recently, young ladies in what could be formally called ‘Intimates.’ Therefore, the solution lies not in regular aerosol sprays that I generally prefer, but in anti-persperants. Cram my armpits full of aluminum, so long as it stops the dreaded underarm puddling!
As much as it pains me to say it, I’m generally a fan of Axe. Their commercials are creative, if vaguely sexist (although Old Spice had me in stitches with ‘I’m on a horse!’) and even the directions on the side of the package read as if the hypothetical pharmacist is setting you up to get laid that very night but scores of young sorority ladies in faux cheerleader fetish outfits. So when I realized the normal strength de-sweatulator I used was not up to the challenge, I stayed on with the name brand and tried their so-called Prescription Strength stick.
I had not known they made this product, but the nerd in me hopes to the God that may or may not exist that they keep bringing it, because the packaging and branding, as always with Axe products, is completely absurd. This SHIT, as they say, is BANANAS.
The stick itself is uneventful, everything you’d expect from a plastic tube you rub vigorously under your arms, a black wodge with a twist at one end and slightly sweet smelling gunk coming out the other. The box however, is a completely different story. Why they need a box is just simply beyond me, but this is like the Plan 9 of deodorant boxes, if such a thing exists. It stands as a black monolith, an imposing block seeming to radiate energy, with a blue cross emblazoned across the front, as if Axe bought a lab coat and insists on everybody at the family party calling him ‘Doc.’ The side of the box instructs you to use it the night before, as the metals in the cream you’re smearing on yourself takes some time to embed into your skin, but that you can use it in the morning if you were too busy that night GETTING SOME HIGH FIVE GUYS. That made me cringe, because even if I do genuinely like their products, Axe still goes a little far sometimes for my tastes. However, what freaked me out was when I actually opened the box, a nurse was staring at me.
I assume she was a nurse. She wasn’t wearing scrubs, but a fetish zed version of a nurse’s uniform that went out of style around the time of the Civil Rights movement, or around when nurses realized they needed pockets to put their nursing shit in. The woman is printed on the inside of the box, high contrast black on blue, her face peering out at you from the opened lid, and as you look farther inside, you see more of her, or at least her legs, which take up 7/10ths of her physical form. If this is a photo of a real woman, she’s either photoshopped beyond comprehension or one hell of a good runner. Like, Olympian marathon level. For cyborg gazelles.
Is this really the level of desperation in the ‘testosterone based deodorants’ audience? That they actually need a picture of a woman in their toiletries? What for, I really don’t want to begin to imagine.
Please, if anyone has any interesting observations of their deodorants, I’d love to hear them. What I’m trying to say is comment, for frak’s sake.