LocalCommentary.com
David Rodeback's Blog

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Real Men Don't Smell Like Strawberries

A case study in the free market's shampoo aisles.

Recently, here at the blog, I extolled the virtues of the free market, as I have done before. Let's see how the free market did this week as I tried to buy, of all things, shampoo.

I don't have a lot of hair, but what I have, I like to keep clean. Suave used to have a fairly ordinary, very economical shampoo. It wasn't anything fancy, but I didn't want anything fancy. It worked, and it cost about $0.99, so it was just about perfect. These days, there's a lot of Suave on the shelf, if Wal-Mart has stocked the shelf recently, but none of it is plain or ordinary. Last time I went through this minor economic ordeal, I stumbled upon a Suave for Men. This week it was nowhere to be found, at least not at Wal-Mart.

There is a fun little scene in You've Got Mail where Tom Hanks' character is musing on the modern coffeehouse. Here's what he says, as quoted at IMDb.com:

The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what . . . they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.

That movie was a few years ago -- a decade, actually -- and I think a tall decaf cappuccino costs more now, but you get the idea. If you really do get the idea, you understand how I feel on the shampoo aisle.

• "Cucumber Melon Splash"? I like cucumbers. I like melons. Not in my hair.
• "Fresh Mountain Strawberry"? I love mountains. I love strawberries. Not in my hair.
• "Juicy Green Apple"? You're kidding, right? Not in what's left of my hair.

I don't want to smell bad, but I don't want to smell pretty, either. I'm a guy. I'm not metrosexual, even if I do think Frasier and Niles Crane are hugely funny (fictional) guys.

Suave. Men. Shampoo. Is this so difficult? No, not the "Dual Charged Hair + Body Wash." I have soap for that other function. (Not a "body bar" or a "bath bar." Soap!)

I want shampoo. Just shampoo. For a guy.

Well, one of the virtues of a market is that there is more than one brand on the shelf. So I started looking at other brands. Herbal Essences was next, but I won't make that mistake again.

• "Totally Twisted"? Not really my style.
• "Dangerously Straight"? Well, I'm straight, but this sounds downright homophobic. Also not my style.
• "Body Envy"? Have you ever seen me? No one envies this body, no matter what hair product I use.
• "Long-Term Relationship"? No, sorry, I want to use it and throw it away, not marry it.

Finally, I gave up on Wal-Mart. Thanks to the free market, there's a Target store not far away. It had all of the aforementioned hair care adventures. Maybe it even had "No Flakin' Way," but I didn't look for a dandruff shampoo -- at least, I hope that's a dandruff shampoo. In any case, it took me about five seconds to find on Target's better-stocked shelves the trio of words I sought. Suave. Men. Shampoo.

Now I know where to go next time.

Long live the free market.

Copyright 2008 by David Rodeback.
All rights reserved.
Permission is given to publish this article elsewhere on the Web or via e-mail only under these conditions: The article is published intact and unchanged, and is properly credited to the author; and a visible link is included to the article's page at LocalCommentary.com.