Grooming – Splendid Isolation

Requiem

October 28, 2025 Kim du Toit Corporate Fuckery, Grooming, Marketing / Advertising

Well, it finally happened. After just under six decades of faithful service, I finally used the very last one of these:

Now, for New or else Forgetful Readers [Alzheimer’s joke deleted], I discussed this problem in some, possibly lamentable detail back here, so I’m not going to rehash the whole sorry tale of Procter & Gamble’s corporate fuckwittery all over again.

Nope. I have swallowed all that rage, and decided to Move On.

So I tried this variant of NEW Old Spice, because at first sniff, it actually wasn’t that bad — almost (but not quite) as good as the original:

I used it for a few days, but then discovered that while its fragrance isn’t bad, the texture of the deodorant — a sort of stiff paste — is awful. In fact, after a day of wearing the stuff, the next morning’s shower just about requires the use of a Brillo pad to remove the stuff from the old pits, in that it hardens like some kind of ghastly semi-concrete. It’s not a chemical anti-perspirant (which I never use), but I have to feel that the sticky residue performs exactly the same function, simply by clogging up your pores. Sorry, but that just can’t be healthy.

So into the trash it went, leaving me with the same task of finding a decent replacement for my Old Spice Classic Fresh. (Did I mention already how long I’ve been using said deodorant? I did? Yeah, sixty-odd years, without a break, just in case you missed it.)

It seems that most modern deodorants are aimed at girlymen or the LGBTOSTFU Set [some overlap], both in terms of their marketing and their perfume. Needless to say, I am not one of these people.

Thus it was that in my hour of desperation, I happened upon an oldie:

Good grief: do they even still make this stuff? I remember my Dad using the aftershave lotion manifestation, and I was astonished to find the brand was still around. And it doesn’t smell bad, either. When polled, New Wife found it not objectionable, which is factor #2 in its acceptance. Finally, it’s of the same consistency as the traditional roll-on (like Classic Fresh) and doesn’t require a Dremel tool for its removal in the shower.

Clearly, someone at whoever makes English Leather has not made the P&G mistake, and realized that brand loyalty — long-term brand loyalty — should not just be summarily discarded in favor of some New Thing, and kept it going. I hope.

Of course when it comes to business like this, there’s always going to be a fly in the ointment, and therefore it should come as no surprise that the English Leather roll-on deodorant costs nearly three times as much as my Old Faithful. Which I’m just going to have to endure, maybe at the expense of cutting out one range trip a month so as to afford the damn stuff. (I should at this point acknowledge that had the price of Classic Fresh gone up by a similar amount, I would probably have paid the premium — grudgingly, but nevertheless — and continued to use it. So suck on that factoid, you P&G shitforbrains.)

All these ripples came about because some cocksucker [sic] in Marketing / Accounting / Advertising at Procter & Gamble made a decision to end a product that has had a loyal following for many decades, no doubt simply so they can free up the production line for the latest in gayboy scents which will in all likelihood have few long-term customers because that type always goes after the New Thing, and stupid companies like Procter & Fucking Gamble are doomed to follow these tits around in the vain hope that one day these new customers might actually stick with one product variant — kind of like the customers for the Classic Fresh used to do for decades at a time.

I hope that the Old Spice division at P&G goes out of business soon. That, or whoever signed off on the discontinuation of Classic Fresh dies of an unspeakably painful disease, along with his/her entire family.

Bad Optics

August 25, 2025 Kim du Toit Grooming

…or “not a good look”, as people used to say.

While slouching through the usual dreck on Teh Intarwebz the other day, I came upon an article which was a thinly-veiled sales schtick for this charmingly-named self-help book:

In fairness, there was an asterisk placed strategically to bowdlerize the Bad Word, but I hate them because I’m not interested in having to slow my reading down to decipher Rosetta Stone-type glyphs inserted into words to prevent people with delicate sensibilities from assuming the principal characteristic of fainting goats.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. This is.

Underneath the book cover was a pic of the author:

…no doubt, he took up his legal career after a stint in the Merchant Navy, or, as his name implies, after realizing that grave-digging didn’t have good prospects what with this Kubota stuff becoming all the rage in modern cemetery operations.

Now I’m somewhat famous for hating the way that people dress in the modern, oh-so casual world (to say nothing of body art), and I’m sure that this publicity pic Sexton has chosen must appeal to love-starved women seeking a way out from their joyless marital unions.

And I know that very few lawyers nowadays go to the office looking like Harvey Specter from the Suits TV show (more’s the pity).

But seriously?

Sorry, but I can’t take “high stakes” as a description for a lawyer with full sleeve tattoos, in a pic. For Mike Tyson and his ilk, hell yeah. For a lawyer? No.

Come back Harvey, all is forgiven.

A Matter Of Privacy

August 12, 2025 Kim du Toit Manners

This silly situation got me thinking — it’s about a mother rifling through her 17-year-old daughter’s handbag, and finding the morning-after pill — all about the whole topic of privacy and personal space.

Am I the only man in the world who, if his wife asks hims to “get it out of my purse”, just hands her the bag to get whatever it is out for herself?

If ever there’s an article which exemplifies the concept of “private space”, it’s a woman’s handbag. When I’m asked why I didn’t just look in the bag, I usually make a joke of it, saying things like: “There’s things with teeth in there!”

It’s not that I’m afraid of what I’ll find in there — I doubt very much whether there’s anything in there that could upset me — but it really is a concern for my wife’s privacy.

Everyone needs a private space. It’s not necessarily a space that might harbor something that the owner doesn’t want anyone else to see, although it very well might be; but there’s a concept involved which I think should be respected at all costs.

There’s another old saying that covers this: if you invade someone’s privacy, don’t be shocked or angered by what you may find.

My old friend Patterson once told me how his wife was always asking him, “What are you thinking about?” and he, quite understandably, took umbrage at her impertinence. “For fuck’s sake,” he expostulated to me, “are there no parts of my life that she doesn’t want to examine or look over?” Anyway, the next time she asked him that intrusive question, his response was epic: “I was just thinking about how I’d spend the insurance money if you died.” And when she got upset, his response was equally cutting: “Do you just want me to lie to you?” End of discussion, and much later, end of marriage (his second or third, I don’t remember).

I remember once reading about a guy who got pissed off when he discovered his wife going over his workshop, opening cupboards and looking into his toolbox. And when he confronted her — “What the fuck did you think you’d find?” — his wife couldn’t understand his anger, because she had no clue about how men want their privacy kept sacrosanct.

Here’s the thing. We men are evil fuckers. In every man, there’s a quiet, secret space which harbors impure thoughts, impure activities and pathological impulses. Sometimes, to be sure, those secret spaces include nefarious activities: infidelity, criminality, shameful behavior, whatever. Whether it’s a phone, a hiding place or a secret credit card / bank account, it doesn’t matter; they exist.

The point is that even if that secret space doesn’t involve something nefarious, it’s still private and we will guard it zealously. Think of it as a personal manifestation of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment: the right to privacy being the ability of an individual to keep their personal information and private life out of the public domain. And in this case, “public” doesn’t just mean “the public”; it means everyone else in the fucking world, including wives, children and parents.

So yeah, our concerned mother in the above article was being snoopy — even though I think she had every right to be concerned about her not-yet-adult daughter — but it’s quite understandable that her daughter would feel utterly betrayed by the invasion of her privacy, nevertheless.

AFS

June 25, 2025 Kim du Toit Clothing, Fashion

…just another stupid acronym, this time standing for Another Fucking Snob.

This guy Nicky Haslam claims to be an arbiter of “class” or more often of what constitutes “low class” or “common.” Like most of his ilk, he’s simply a waspish little poseur, this time with his list of things or people he finds “common”:

Selling art
Artsplaining
Sistine Chapel
Christie’s
Downlit art
‘Art is subjective’
Silent auctions
Children by Renoir
Symbolism
Hanging photographs
‘Can’t see what you see in that’
David Hockney (can’t paint for toffee but can draw like a god)
Francis Bacon is the campest artist since Gustav Moreau
Waldemar Januszczak’s real name
Giverny
The Mona Lisa
Oil paintings of big game
Oversized garden art
Studio visits
Philistine
Genres
Frieze
White
Trauma
Interpreted
Banksy
Validation
‘Have you got anything to fit this space?’
Meaningful
‘I’m afraid it’s reserved’
Kate Moss
Tapestry wall hangings
Have you noticed there is no ‘school’ of Lucien Freud
Saint Laurent
Buying art at weekends
The Biennale

Most of it flies right over my head (which would probably make him add me to his list), but whatever. (And I’m sorry, but art is very much subjective, or else there’d only be Thomas Kincaid’s paintings hanging on every wall and in every gallery.)

All that said, however, there is nothing that shouts “common” to me more than this choice of wardrobe:

…which happens to be what this little tit was wearing when he oh-so proudly displayed his latest tea towel.

You Asked For It

June 24, 2025 Kim du Toit Feminazis, Manners

Here’s one that could cause a Schadenböner:

A clip shared on TikTok has prompted a battle of the sexes as increasing numbers of women argue men should give up their seats on public transport so they can sit down instead.

The video, which has been liked more than 1.4 million times, was filmed on TfL’s Central line and shows a whole row of men sitting down on the tube, while a row of women are standing in the aisle and holding on to poles.

[Another] user posted a clip that also showed a whole row of seats taken up by men on a Jubilee line train, while she and her other female friends stood on the side.

She wrote in text over the video: ‘Men used to go to war for us and now we can’t even get a man to let us sit down on the train.’

My own feelings on this are quite explicit. I always stand up and offer my seat to a woman — always have, always will. It’s how I was brought up.

However: I was also brought up during a time when women were ladylike, gracious and always grateful when a man surrendered his seat to her. It was an acknowledgement of manners, rather than a matter of divine right.

However, young men have been brought up today in a time when men are savagely browbeaten and instilled with the mantra that women are not the “weaker sex”, are equal to men in every respect (even though they often aren’t), and equality reigns supreme. And their attitudes reflect that:

One TikToker said he would only offer his seat to pregnant women or elderly people. ‘You equal woman can stand up just like I would if there were no seats,’ he added.

Another wrote: ‘Full grown adults expecting other full grown adults to give them a seat for no reason.’

Completely understandable.

So you womyns won’t get any privileges just because you’re a woman, then, because that would be sexist.

You feministicals wanted to live in this world, so STFU when it’s not always to your advantage.

And I apologize to my long-suffering Lady Readers, none of whom (I suspect) are women like the above womyns, would always be properly appreciative of the occasional gentlemanly gesture, and might indeed be even more dismissive of the Modern Womyns than I am.