Veet-Veet; Va-Va-Voom: Gone!

Ahh, the power of the modern-day thingie called a BLOG! 

No sooner than a Jezebel cries foul and calls for it, does the public rally around that plea, a riptide of discontent runs through all of media and even a mighty company such as Reckitt-Benckiser will yield and pull an entire line of costly new ads that it was so sure it would please, it had announced all over the place with great fanfare. 

R-B had, in fact, told its more than 300,000 Facebook fans that the new ad campaign was coming: it visibly thought they all shared its corporate sense of humor because it had even precised on which show and at what time the first of the new ads would premiere (on Dancing With The Stars, of all things; a show that one has to have a great sense of humor just in order to watch, indeed! You call that DANCING? You shouldn't be dancing, Billy Dee Williams!  And that goes for most every other contestant, too! But that's another story...)

Ever since, it seems like all 300,000 plus ''fans'' have participated in the virulent backlash that has everyone in social media and the wild, wild web overall calling the peeps behind Veet such things as misogynists, stereotype-spreaders and homophobes too! Jesebel took the pains of describing all the videos at length, even embedding them all on her blog: she didn't expect, even in her most optimist-activist-on-the-spur-of-the-moment, that R&B there would be pulling any of them, definitely not on such short notice. But the fact is this is exactly what they did: they yanked all of the videos from YouTube!  The only reason why *this blogger* was able to see any of those ''awful'' ads was because the Yahoo ''reporter'' was a tiny wee bit more clever than the Jezebel blogger: she embedded onto her article page the two ads salvaged by something called Heads Ads (a public service, surely? One that would sound an alarm, raise an alert such as ''heads up, folks: look at what crap they're passing off as ads again! Ban them! Ban them all to Hades!!!'' - that sort of thing?) and so, now, they are still viewable for all of us who don't use Veet, don't watch DWTS or don't waste time in front of the damnable TV anymore...! 

Anyhow...

It was one particular blogger that blew the whistle on Veet here. One particular ''writer'' on Jezebel whose blog has, time and again, been the flagship of protests against everything and anything... odd, to be refined in language... She complains about rampant sexism everywhere. She criticizes the media overtly - and finally gets quoted by it (her brilliant retort to Veet: a new slogan for them, which was ''Good grief, please cease''... wha-at? Cease what? Cease growing hair? Veet would be out of business if it even attempted to plant that suggestion into the minds of their impressionable girly-customer-base! I don't think you thought this one through all too well, Katey; nor did the Yahoo article that quoted you on it, too! A Lilith, that one: Lilit ''sans le H'' - yikes? Lilit Marcus - who? But never mind all that now...)  Aye, the whistle-blower here was one Katey; Kate Dries. (Again... who? Exactly!) On that blog of hers, she carries on and forth with petty grievances and social commentary left and right, that makes her appear to be the proverbial chicken that just got her head cut off; things such as lamenting that ''petit fours'' shouldn't be the distinguished, less crude way to refer to that practice commonly known as... doggy-style?  Come on! (Why shouldn't it be, you Jezebel?!? The French gave us their bizarre way to kiss: they can make up for that now, with this...! Lest all you want is French Toast from them - which I would understand and condone, all at once... Mais c'est une autre histoire!)

''Jezebel'' Kate Dries can be proud of herself on this occasion though: her blog started a tempest-in-a-blog, an instant reaction to something distasteful (in the eyes of the p-c world, it is) a veritable mini-revolution that got the powerful ones of this world to back off...!  She wasn't as successful when clamoring for a trans teacher to get his-her-it job back in Texas. Nor with her crusade to get oafish U.S. customs agents (aka Immigration and Customs Enforcement; thus as ''I.C.E.'' and as cold as it, too!) to stop detaining pregnant women at the border as they deny they do but unquestionably still do... But she didn't refrain from clarioning victory with this one, as Veet did pull what she was reluctant to call ''stupid ads'' at first - but she sure does in the follow-up post, post-viewer backlash and ads-pull...

(Onwards to bash the Dove patch ads, hmm? Calling it bullshit won't get you anywhere though, girl; language, language! Maybe you want to keep it safe by keeping to the Tweet Beat instead, hmm?)

Bravo, Miss Dries! You're the most successful Jezebel yet: and that site is chock-full of them, trying and trying hard...! Carry on boycotting (girlcotting?) Veet and Dove, now - quickly find something else to shave with *and* don't forget some moisturizer, too...

VaVaVoom Vlogger

Photo: courtesy of MTV News

Grace Helbig has made it real big now - she was recognized for her vlogging habit in a huge way when MTV crowned her the Vlogger of the Year a mere few months ago. 2013's best vlogger edged out stiff competition for this coveted title: chief among them, 15 year-old Tyler Oakley who is doing wonders, apparently, over at our old friend YouTube... (And we thought RayWilliamJohnson and Philip DeFranco jointly or not so-jointly co-ruled that platform - hmm?)

''Daily Grace'' (love the name - notwithstanding some peeps who see it as near-blasphemy; me, I see a nod to religious fervor by adapting it to the modern tendencies; besides, she was blessed enough to be given that name at birth, no? It is hers to use as she wants - or needs.) won out by a landslide as the votes poured in all in her favor at the most crucial time. Polls had been opened for three days, from December 17th to the 19th, with the results being made public by MTV on the 20th. What a nice Christmas gift she received then!

Grace graciously accepted her prize and title over the same medium she delivers her magic every other day: she recognized that all the other vloggers who had been in the running right until the end were ''wonderful, talented content creators'' and that she was just fortunate to have been ''lumped into'' the whole mix of them here. Aside from whiz kid Tyler on YouTube, there was stiff competition coming from all corners indeed; and in such a diversified fashion as well... The names alone can tell the tale: JacksGap, iJustine, Glove and Boots, Cameron Dallas, Shane Dawson and the most intriguing of all: Lohanthony about whom Daily Grace herself has only the greatest compliments to utter: says she, listening to ''Lohanthony will change your world and perspective'' - nothing less. (We must utter at least one ''whaaat'' here though: not a even a nod for UhOhBro...? What gives...?!?)

In the end, though, the MTV crowd has spoken: on the TV station that speaks louder and faster than its own shadow, a vlogger has been crowned, once more, the surest-fire, most reliable quick and consumable delivery of what's happening out there all over the place on the ever trusty web!  This contest has been going for a few years now and several ''ce-Web-rities'' have been legitimized in this way; it is Daily Gr... (okay, I can't type it anymore - let's just shorten it to ''D.G.'' already!) ... D.G.'s turn, hence, to enjoy her newfound (for spread wider than ever now) ''ce-Web-rity'' and let her enjoy it to the fullest! (For we know that if Jenna Marbles had it now, she sure would!)

Long live the Queen of Vlogging, eh?  (Sorry, Marina Orlova - it isn't you!)