My Secret: This Commercial Makes Me Gag

by Dani

The couple is perfect. They’re beautiful – though not annoyingly so – and back from some sort of perfect night on the town. They’re laughing, so you can’t even fault them for being humorless or boring. Well, not without more evidence.

They collapse into bed, doing that wholesome just-about-to-make-out thing that couples in these kinds of commercials so often do. And then the voiceover from A Lady Who Knows: “It doesn’t take much to ruin a moment like this.”

It’s a commercial for Secret Clinical Strength, and, as always with deodorants, the message is “Wear our product or you risk being a complete hosebeast, deservedly rejected by all.” Which is pretty normal, so it didn’t really register with me until I’d half-watched the commercial maybe five or ten times: Wait a minute – is that a wedding dress she’s wearing?

It is, in fact, a wedding dress.

And in the end, the message of this bland little commercial turned out to be pretty bold: Not only will a whiff of pit screw up the average makeout session, it can ruin your wedding night. Though the commercial leaves it unclear as to whether your wedding night will merely shatter into frantic showering and awkwardness or if the groom will be shinnying down the drainpipe to run off in search of an annulment. I guess it depends on his level of moxie.

I asked Chris about this commercial, which of course hadn’t registered with him. He was pretty good-natured about me forcing him to watch girl-themed TV with him until it came on, and about the part where I yelled “SEE? There’s a VEIL!”

He mostly thought the groom’s armpit-nuzzling foreplay was weird. “Why doesn’t he scooch up a few inches and kiss her neck?”

I asked about the destroying-the-mood theme and he snorted. “Any guy who thinks he’s going to have sex without sweat involved hasn’t had sex yet.”

Well, I have occasionally suspected that of people who work in ad agencies. But, again, the commercial isn’t about killing the mood during some ordinary hookup. Just to be sure, I asked Chris if imperfect armpits would destroy our perfect wedding night.

Chris took my hand and got down on his knees by the couch.

“Do you understand how sweaty I’m going to be on our wedding night? I’m going to be lucky if my shirt’s not transparent. You’re going to have to peel that thing off me.”

I had the basic idea, but he seemed to have hit a theme.

“I’m going to be drenched. I’m going to be a monster.”

I’m pretty sure the couple in the commercial don’t talk to each other that way, so I think it’s best that our engagements have shaken out the way they have.

Chris’s point, though disgusting, was sweet: No groom in his right mind really thinks his bride is going to make it through a full wedding and reception and still be immaculate. And since we’re all marrying cool, right-minded guys, we don’t have too much to worry about. Not that I was worried. I still can’t figure out which terrified, vulnerable women this ad might actually work on.

But whoever they are, Secret really thinks they’ve got them. I don’t know what it is about Secret Clinical Strength’s ad agency and weddings. This one takes aim at the bridesmaids instead. The bride clearly has it together: Not only is she able to have a rollicking, armpit-baring good time, she’s getting married. Whereas her poor swamp-pitted bridesmaid friends are clearly doomed to be single until they remedy their heavy-perspiring ways.

It’s just as well. If they did have wedding nights, they’d only screw them up.

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