I HATE perfume ads. I literally despise perfume ads and I always have.
I just don’t understand why they have to be so sexual. I’m sorry but I don’t care how flipping good you smell. Gucci Guilty (the worst one of them all) is just false advertising if I am being honest.
I always cringed away from perfume ads, or anything sexual on the television at all. This would be the convenient time that I would just happen to check my phone, or go to the bathroom. I was never comfortable with it.
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I don’t know if that was just a part of growing up. Or if it was just me slowly entering my awkward phase. But I was never okay with it.
Yet, you could happily have a conversation with me about homosexuality or something, and I would literally have no problem with it. That wasn’t weird to me at all. Yet it would have been way worse than any perfume advert back in my mom’s day.
Isn’t it weird that something has been around since the beginning of humanity (technically) makes me cringe, and then something that is still so controversial has no effect on me?
Not only this but I would happily be discussing women’s rights and feminism to anyone who would listen to me. But then if one person murmured anything about “becoming a teenager” or “changes” or anything around that region; I was bright red and out the door.
I don’t know how this selective aversion happened. All the movies that I was watching as a child were way more open about love and romance than anything else, but I only embraced the art of holding hands and maybe a peck on each cheek, but nothing more.
No Disney movie that I ever watched mentioned anything beyond straight marriages, nor did they ever mention women’s equality. Watching them now, they made a lot more references to sex than my little childish mind could process at the time.
My friends would often be giggling over something that was deemed unsuitable for their age groups. I would often join in on the giggles, but this was not because I relished in growing up, but because I had begun my quest for acceptance. I was always the one to nod along, rather unconvincingly though it seems, because I was often found out.
Now, I am a lot more learned in the world, considering that I am nearly sixteen and things have changed a bit. My mom and I can have a lot more conversations that don’t end in “I’ll tell you when you are older” and I have to admit, it’s kinda nice.
My friends and I, particularly my close girlfriends, pretty much have a “no details spared” kind of relationship. I have probably told them pretty much everything about me, including some of the awkward stuff, that would have had me mentally scarred, let alone blushing, at a younger age.
It’s kind of liberating because we are all learning about the world around us, as well as learning about ourselves, at the same time. Every conversation tends to produce a lot of laughs to say the least.
But I will still never discuss anything beyond a 12’s rating with my dad because some things will never change.
My friends and I have always discussed homosexuality, feminism and everything in that controversial bracket from a very young age, because we were never afraid of it.
Now, we have active discussions in the classroom about it, and how to make the world a more equal place. We all have a “sorry to inconvenience you but I am trying to change the world” kick-ass kind of attitude.
I think that this a very natural transition for us. And I honestly couldn’t be happier that the world has evolved enough that homosexuality and equality isn’t off limits. I know that the whole “sexual” stuff took a while, but I am kind of happier that this is the second step in growing up, the first being equality.
So here’s to an equal world from a younger age.
And to an end to over-sexual perfume ads….
• Follow Zoë O’Connor on Twitter; @Zobo2042
