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If couples had 36 duty-free hours, who'd need pills?
February 03, 2004
IT WASN'T JUST Janet Jackson's breast that
had its protective covering stripped away this
weekend. The American marriage is, kind of,
out there, too.
What rattled me more than the thought of those
10-year-olds in the television audience witnessing
Justin Timberlake's rip job was the corporate
thinking behind the new male impotency pill,
Cialis, which made its advertising debut during
the Super Bowl.
Cialis is the latest entry in the erectile
dysfunction drug wars. But instead of using
a sports stud as a spokesman, like football's
Mike Ditka for Levitra and baseball's Rafael
Palmeiro for Viagra (Bob Dole was sooooooo not
the right guy for that job), the Cialis ads
star the American marriage.
Middle-aged couples are shown in languid settings,
apparently reconnecting with each other after
too many years of kids, work, errands and chores.
Cialis promises a 36-hour window of opportunity
for the rapprochement, while the other two can
only guarantee four or five hours. Four or five
hours of what, I cannot say. Sexual arousal?
Or a cease-fire in the marriage wars?
I am not sure what is at the root of this apparent
epidemic of erectile dysfunction - especially
among the virile, salt-and-pepper-haired types
in the commercials. But it is comforting to
me to know that a little pill can cure everything
- from the fact that he hasn't made it home
for dinner in 15 years of raising kids to the
fact that she won't let him forget it.
True, the cure lasts only 36 hours. At that
point, I suppose, the sexual appetite disappears,
and the ennui returns.
Cialis
is playfully referred to with the French expression
"Le Weekender" because it gives the
couple time to rekindle, and act on, those old
sparks. Thirty-six hours is a nice long time,
but some obvious problems occur to me.
First, no couple I know can string together
36 hours of romantic solitude without leaving
the house, the kids and the jobs in the rear-view
mirror.
Second, if they could, they probably wouldn't
need any help from a pill.
Finally - and I hope I am not revealing too
much here - there is a whole list of things
I would like to do with my husband during a
romantic weekend, and only one of them takes
place in a bed. Doesn't anybody go to the movies
anymore?
I find this whole business very unnerving,
frankly. The American marriage - which has never
borne close inspection - is now under the withering
scrutiny of a powerful triumvirate: the federal
government, the drug companies and the media.
President Bush wants us to communicate better
about the sanctity of marriage, and he's willing
to spend $1.5 billion of our money on it.
The drug companies can smell the billions to
be made on even the most latent sexual insecurity
in the American male.
And, if you want to be president, you have
to explain whatever intimate work-and-marriage
deals you have negotiated with your spouse to
Diane Sawyer and her television audience.
Seems to me, whatever ails the American marriage
won't be solved with a pill or a program or
a prime-time marriage therapy session.
But the idea of 36 hours away from it all holds
great potential, I think.
Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun |
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