Just Thinking About the Charmin Bears Makes Me Cringe

According to this story on mental_floss, nothing is more American than Mom, apple pie, and the freedom to wipe your butt with commercially produced toilet paper.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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apoxia

Toilet paper must be the second-most euphemised product after tampons and pads. Recently in NZ we’ve had an ad campaign by a major TP seller that tried to extend the uses of toilet paper. The woman in the ad stuffs some down her bra to pad out her dress and then uses some to apply cosmetics to her face. The voice-over man tells us that their toilet paper has many more uses and really is “pamper paper”. I gag every time I see the ad.
growf

I was interested to note during a recent trip to Neveda that the US Charmin bears have dialogue – and it seemed weird. I much prefer the UK ads with silent characters and voiceover instead.

I always liked the ad campaign – with its “bears defecating in the woods” motif I thought it was both clever and honest: “Toilet paper: you wipe your arse with it.”
arkizzle / Moderator

“Americans, on average, use 57 squares a day..”

..but not for pooping, surely. What do you spend your 57 squares on?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  .but not for pooping, surely.
  
  I believe that we eat quite a few more fruits and vegetables than our UK brethren.
ian_b

well I’ve been to countries where shitting was illegal.
- Maggie Koerth-Baker
  
  If we criminalize shitting then only the criminals will shit. And they’re too inconsiderate to light a candle.
SimeonW

I want to hear more about these other, non-commercial, modes of toilet paper production. It there some maker movement 3d printing toilet paper, or lovingly crafting it from the pulp of crushed ukuleles?
robinite

yup. i remember being in bathroom stalls in Latvia that had holders stocked with slips of old newspaper to use.
dculberson

I’ve been in plenty of places where the bathrooms had nothing. It was a luxury to have a toilet, much less toilet paper. America has awesome public shitters.
Anonymous

This might help that cringe: the Charmin bears are actually a creation of the gleefully subversive British animator Joanna Quinn, whose work generally deals with issues of feminism and social class. Check out her non-commercial work sometime- http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/534141/

-animation student
Dr. Rhetoric

I think we all know that bears crap in the woods. It seems unlikely they would use toilet paper. Leaves probably, bunnies perhaps, but not toilet paper. Just saying.