Friday, May 12, 2006

A host of golden daffodils? Scrub, Willy, scrub.

I have a cute little bottle of bath gel (they call it Smoothing Shower Scrub: Daffodil Fields) with a cute little insouciant kind of notice at the back warning me that “This finished product not tested on animals”. Simpatico and fool that I am, I naively assumed that this intimate confession was meant to prove once for all how gentle the Shower Scrub makers (aptly named Bath & Body Works) and, by implication, their Smoothing Shower Scrub, were. The truth is far from simple. The gel really lives up to the second part of its descriptor. When I coax the lazy fluid on a loofah and start scrubbing as I’m supposed to, the lavish lather really scrrrrubs me up. So I look at the label again and there it is in small undecipherable print for me to squint at: “Cleanses and polishes skin.” (Emphasis mine.) It figures. Apparently, they forgot to remove the not-too-well pounded daffodil seeds before bottling the concoction. Do you think any self-respecting guinea pig would stand for getting its skin peeled off in the interest of consumer welfare? Every time I read Wordsworth’s Daffodils, I used to wonder what it would be like to dance with “[a] host of golden daffodils”. Now I know. Sort of. Second hand. http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/WordsworthDaffodils.htm.

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