Once again, my friends, it’s Festivus, that magical time of year when we’re encouraged to air our grievances and tell the world how we really feel. This year marks my fourth annual Festivus blog, one I spend nearly an entire year writing and refining for your reading pleasure. I hope you enjoy this year’s list of complaints and are inspired to share your own. Cheers.
1. Tampon Branding
Last summer, as I was perusing the shelves of the “women’s troubles” aisle at my local grocery store, I came across a brand of tampons called, “Tampax Radiant.” That’s right, radiant. A word synonymous with delightful, sunny, and glorious. This shit has gone too far, I thought to myself, and I promptly opened the Notes app on my phone and started this year’s list of grievances.
I’ve described my period in a multitude of ways since I began managing my uterine lining so many years ago, but I can’t say I’ve ever thought of the experience as “radiant.” For me, inconvenient, obnoxious, and repugnant sum it up much better, but perhaps there are women out there with beautiful, shiny, happy vaginas that generate unicorns and fairies once a month to whom these tampons apply. I am not one of these women.
Consistent with other brands, pink and purple graphics adorn the box, which I can only assume is how a man views menstruation. I also suspect it was a man who thought to name these cotton warriors “radiant” in the first place. Following his coining of the term, I’m confident a swarm of male marketing novices promptly took him out for a smart cocktail at the hotel bar down the block.
Look, I don’t need a tender adjective to describe my tampons. What I really need from my feminine hygiene products is for them to do their job. How about “You probably won’t have to throw away your underwear” or “Comfortable enough” or even “It’s fine.” Because truth be told, none of these products are delightful. To be delightful would mean the occasion for which I’m using said tampon is also delightful, which we all know is total bullshit. So just give me something that doesn’t cause me to bleed through my jeans and call it a day. Oh and while we’re at it, can we please stop calling tampons “sporty?” If a tampon is good enough for me to use while playing tennis, can it also work if I’m just sitting on the couch eating chips? I’m not trying to be an athlete while dealing with God’s curse. I’m trying to watch serial killer documentaries and not ruin my furniture. Thanks.
2. “Student” Fundraising
The thing I’ve learned this year about “student” fundraising is that it doesn’t actually involve students at all. When I was a kid, I was slanging meats and cheeses door to door in snow boots equipped only with a glossy pamphlet and a shoddy pen. My parents were minimally involved. Sadly, gone are the days when parents sent bundled children out alone in the frozen tundra of northern Indiana to sell summer sausage. Today’s fundraising is done almost entirely online and completed on the watch of the parents who are responsible for setting up the personalized fundraising page, sharing the page with their friends and family, collecting the money, and distributing the goods. It’s the kids who are now minimally involved and missing out on a true right of passage. It’s also the children who will neither know the anxiety of being forced into an awkward conversation with a neighbor nor risk being kidnapped by a stranger. What a shame.
In all fairness, the rewards our children receive nowadays are fairly mediocre unless they sell upwards of $1 billion dollars in cutting boards and wrapping paper. Once, Van received what was deemed a “magician’s tool” that was supposed to transform white paper into clear paper. I swear to God this “tool” was actually a rolling machine and the only thing it turned anything into was doobies. If this “prize” was actually intended for the parents, these fundraising fools are going to need to up their game since most grown folks already know how to roll their own.
3. Talking on the Phone
I absolutely loathe talking on the phone. I hate it so much, in fact, that I will ignore calls and spend the next 30 minutes thinking of a way to have a text exchange when I could have just answered the phone and gotten the conversation over with in five minutes. Completely inefficient, yes, yet totally rational if it means I can avoid having a chat. And what’s odd is I have no problem picking up the phone for work or to make an appointment or to sit on hold with DirectTV for 30 minutes only to hear a snarky representative tell me there’s nothing she can do to help. No, it’s people I actually love and want to spend time with who I hate catching up with over the phone. It’s irrational and silly, but it’s who I am as a person and if I need to honor your triggers, please honor mine. Text me (seriously, I can text for hours), make plans to see me in person, but please, under very few circumstances should you ever call me on the phone. Also, Mom and Carrie, if you’re reading this, please know you’re the exception to this rule and also my safe space. Don’t stop calling or picking up the phone.
4. Drivers Post-Apocalypse
A lot has happened in the last 22 months. By far one of the most infuriating is drivers everywhere losing their goddamn minds. From running red lights to holding up traffic in favor of their phones to no longer being able to make a right turn with any semblance of urgency, people on the road these days are one of the many reasons our country is doomed. And although this pandemic has lasted almost two years, let’s be honest in that most people, at least in my state, were only locked down for approximately three months (if that). You’d think people would have gotten the hang of driving again by now. But no, like every other facet of our lives, driving has become completely self-involved even though there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of other drivers on the same road at any given time. Which leads me to my last grievance…
5. Lack of Altruism
If this seemingly never ending pandemic has taught me anything it’s that people don’t give a damn about people. People don’t care about people’s struggles; people don’t care about people’s joy; people don’t care about people’s points of view; people don’t care about people’s health; people don’t care about people’s safety; people simply just don’t care. Unlike empathy, which is the capacity to put oneself in another person’s shoes, altruism is the moral practice of concern for another person’s prosperity. While not intrinsic in nature, altruism is a core value passed down culturally and spiritually that indicates our willingness to genuinely care about another person’s happiness. And altruism these days, it seems, is dead.
In an era of self-love, self-care, and self-indulgence, we’ve stopped caring about whatever it was we once learned about collective well-being. And when we stop caring about others’ happiness, we lose our awareness for what it means to treat others with respect, our understanding about why it matters to practice basic decency, and our appreciation for why it’s sometimes better to put the needs of others before our own. And while we can blame the result on a variety of things like the media or a virus, the bottom line is that this is on us. WE are actively practicing apathy. WE are being selfish. WE are refusing to acknowledge how the happiness of others impacts us all. So instead of viewing altruism as an act of socialism in 2022, look at it as an exercise of humanity, which is something I think we can all use a lot more of in the new year.
Now I realize I took you from tampons to altruism in just a few short paragraphs, but hey, I needed to keep you reading, right? So screw shitty branding but don’t screw your neighbor who we’re no longer putting in a position to kidnap your kid anyway. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. And, most importantly, Blessed Festivus, one and all.
