Herbert Leupin, advertising poster for Maya soap, 1948. Frederic Steinfels, Zürich. Switzerland. Source
did you know soap doesn’t really clean your hands it just makes the water molecules smaller so the water can go into smaller crevices in your skin isn’t that the weirdest shit you’ve read today
my whole life has been a lie
that’s not what happens….
Molecules can’t fucking shrink how the fuck do people believe this kind of shit
Soap molecules have two different ends. One loves water and one hates water. The one that hates water can latch itself to oil. The one that loves water obviously latches onto water. When you wash your hands, the end that hates water latches on to the grease on your hands while the other end sticks to the water, and the molecules take the grease with it as the water comes off your hands
This is some clever advertising but holy shit you’re not wrong.
I work in client servicing at a reputable international advertising agency in the Middle East. One day, we had to evacuate because there was a fairly major fire in our building. This is the conversation I had with a long-time client when I called to tell him.
Me: Hi! I’m sorry, but we’ve had a fire emergency in our tower and we had to vacate the premises. I apologize, but I will not be able to send you the designs today.
Client: Oh no! Can’t you just email it?
Me: Sorry no. The designer was finishing it when we had to leave, and it isn’t finished.
Client: Can’t he just access his email, download it and finish it?
Me: Sorry, it was on his desktop and, since it was quite a large file, he couldn’t upload it anywhere before evacuating.
Client: Can he go back to the office and send it now?
Me: Are you asking me to send him back to a burning building so he can finish a little more quickly?
Client: Oh, I guess that isn’t possible, is it?
Me: No. We’re all okay, by the way.
Client: What?
Me: Nothing.
seeing this made me curse the cultural exchange between America and Japan
i forgot this existed but upon seeing just this preview the tune and his voice came back to me so violently like i was a char in a soap opera who had amnesia and suddenly remembered everything all at once
During the most poor and homeless period of my life, I had a lot of people get angry with me because I spent $25 on Bath and Body Works candles during a sale. They couldn’t comprehend why the hell I would do that when I had been fighting for months to try and get us on our feet, afford food, and have an apartment to live in.
Those candles were placed beside wherever I slept that night. In the morning, I would move them and set them wherever I’d have to hang out. At one point I carried one around in my purse - one of those big honking 3-wick candles. I never lit them, but I’d open them and smell them a lot.
I credit that purchase with a lot of my drive that got me to where I am today. I had been working tirelessly, 15+ hour days with barely any reward, constantly on the phone or trying to deal with organizations and associations to “get help at”. It’d gone on for almost a year by the end of it, and I was so burnt out, to the point that I would shake 24/7. But I could get a bit of relief from my 3-wick “upper middle class lifestyle” candles. They represented my future goals, my home I wanted to decorate, and how I would one day not be in this mess anymore.
When we moved into the apartment, and our financial status improved, I burned those candles every single day. When they were empty, I cleaned them out, stuck labels on them, and they became the starting point of my really cute organization system I had ALWAYS planned to have.
So whenever I hear about someone very poor getting themselves a treat - maybe it’s Starbucks, maybe it’s a home deco item, maybe it’s a video game… I don’t judge them. I get it. I get that you can’t go without anything for that long without it making you go crazy. You need to pull some joy, inspiration, and motivation from somewhere.
poor people deserve things they want, too. it is unfair to expect poor people to only buy things they “need”.
