OMG! When posting the new Kotex tampon ad earlier this week, I didn’t know that the original ad was banned by major US TV networks not only for initially using the word ‘vagina’ but converting the TV ads to ‘down there.’

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‘Down there’ also isn’t allowed by TV censors to discuss where a woman puts her tampon. People can be murdered by the millions in violence that causes me to cover my eyes, but a woman can’t say ‘down there’.

Then I say ‘turn off the damn TV.’ Or watch Discovery, the History Channel or PBS. Whatever we do, let’s make a federal case of the fact that we cannot say ‘vagina’ on American TV. If wish just hit the ‘off’ button for one month, the policy would change so fast, your head would spin.

In the Greek trajedy Lysistrata, written by Aristophanes, women band together to withold sex from their husbands and lovers until they negotiate a peace treaty in The Peloponnesian War. Yes, ladies had that power in 4th century BC Greece.

Can someone please tell me how American women got so penis-whipped that we can’t say the word ‘vagina’ in selling tampons on TV? Honestly, I think we could have gotten a ‘turn off’ in the Seventies. Women felt much more powerful back.

Kimberly-Clark, the owner of Kotex, notes that US TV networks have no such compunction about references to “erectile dysfunction” in prime-time ads for Viagra and Cialis. I say ‘turn off the TV’, buy Kotex tampons and stop lying down like doormats, every time some TV network jock thinks women will behave like lambs, taking whatever dogfood they dish out to us.

This is ridiculous! To add insult to injury, every TV jock jokes about lack of sex drive in American women.

Now you know why American women are totally confused about loving their bodies. Between TV censors and fundamentalists denigrating our body parts — including our VAGINAS, it’s just easier to admit the truth: “I’m not in the mood, dear.”

Where are Greek women when we need them! I repeat: American women are penis-whipped! Anne

More corset photos from the Antiseptic Fashion leather accessories lookbook via Fashionising.com.

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