Beauty Products Review

How can women possibly fight for equality when they have bikini line stubble, bad digestion and gingivitis to deal with?

Women are idiots, ninnies, nincompoops. Women are drooling, giggling buffoons whose minds are empty except for a few wafting fibres and whose bodies are revolting sacs of malfunctioning fluids and duff organs.

If TV adverts are anything to go by, I'm hardly exaggerating.

In "adworld", when they are not fingering piles of white and coloured laundry with robotic smiles, washing up desultorily, luxuriating in lemony fresh bubbles, and vacuuming, scraping, tidying, cooking and wiping with looks of extraordinary interest as their marvellously boisterous sons – because in adworld, boys will be boys, won't they? – track mud across the carpet, women are depicted attempting various ways in which to control their unruly bodies.

Just what is up with up ladies' panty parts these days? In adland, the female knicker zone is an endless terrain of trouble – and stubble. A new razor has been put on the market for that delicate bikini area, just to make sure we're all tidied up and as unnaturally hairless, everywhere, as femininity (you know, that big fantasy fraud that both sexes use to beat real women with) requires us to be.

But that is just the beginning. Delve further and the average consumer uncovers a host of female troubles. The other night, I was disconcerted to see the following adverts, all in a row. First, something to treat the scourge of female incontinence, in which one cured sufferer was laughing so hard with idiotic relief that she fell off her bed. Next, a pastel bottle of vadge-rinsing agent – sorry, a feminine hygiene product – to help with a woman's "confidence" while subtly reinforcing all those fishy medieval fears.

Then there was a proposed remedy for constipation, in which a group of gal pals sat around a cafe table talking candidly about how very hard it was to get anything out during such a trying time.

Next, an about-turn: the focus was not on too little poo, but too much. And again, oddly, it seems that only women suffer. This time, the happily cured lady was so pleased to be free of the runs that she danced clownishly down the street in her pants and vest.

Then, yet more poopy business: a pow-wow of bovine housewives talking about their "digestive transits" and recommending each other a probiotic yoghurt to help grease nature's channels.

Finally, the jewel in the crown: a wafting wheat field in which stood, for no particular reason, a totally naked bare-bottomed young woman. The camera glided up the curve of her shoulder, she smiled alluringly and revealed … a missing tooth. The advert was for a brand of medicated mouthwash that tackles gingivitis.

What with our diseased gums, leaky, stinking and hairy vaginas, and unreasonably capricious bowels, women in adland are truly the second sex when it comes to personal hygiene.

The fight for justice has been derailed by a range of personal ailments which, when cured, induce cringeworthily excessive infantile glee. I'd laugh, but I'm afraid I might soil myself.