- Messages
- 1,113
- Role
- Little
- Incontinent
At a time when at least 25 million American adults experience incontinence, it amazes me that we are still at a point where such a societal stigma is attached to this condition. For crying out loud, that means that everyone is likely to know multiple people who are incontinent! And yet we continue to hide from it as if it is a social disease, as if it is a thing to be ashamed of.
It's not.
It's just a condition of the human body that happens to some of us. But because the instant association occurs between incontinence and babies, things get all mucked up. And it gets worse when the most logical treatment, diapers, is thrown into the mix.
Depends did a series of commercials a few years ago touting itself as simply "a different kind of underwear," which of course is exactly what a diaper is. But it's going to take a whole lot more than some commercials to change the minds of America. And I suspect I know where we need to start: the major media.
Far beyond commercials, the major media influence American culture in ways it's difficult to measure. It was a whole lot easier to imagine a black President after seeing so many of them on TV and in the movies for so many years, paving the way for Barack Obama. LGBT rights, too, have been influenced by portrayals in the media and by major celebrities who have come out. Our films and TV programs don't follow our society; more often, they lead the way.
To this end, I suggest that what ultimately can break the stigma of incontinence and diapers in this country will be a combination of two things:
First, there will need to be some major celebrities who acknowledge their incontinence. And I'm not talk about D-listers. I'm talking about people like Clint Eastwood* or Ellen DeGeneres* or Harrison Ford* or Meryl Streep*. If stars of this magnitude were incontinent and open about it, can you imagine how the world would change?
Second, within the stories we tell on TV, in films, and in books, we need incontinent characters. I mean that isn't even hard. I just wrote a short story in which a 12-year-old, devastated by the death of her mother, starts wetting the bed and wearing diapers because of that. That is not the center of the story; the way she deals with it though is a character element of the girl. The story is 12K words; maybe 150 deal with this issue. It is not by any means an ABDL story; it's a mainstream story that happens to have a very strong and independent 12-year-old who, at present, wears diapers. I'm also in the planning stages of a detective novel in which the detective is incontinent.
My goal is to normalize incontinence. We who are incontinent and who wear diapers because of that are not weird or unusual. We are your mother, your boss, your mailman, the barista at your local Starbucks. We are your grandfather, your sister, your secretary, one of the players on your team, the waiter at your favorite restaurant. We are the millions. And we leak. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
*I have no information that these stars suffer from incontinence, nor am I implying that they do. I use them merely as examples of the kind of people who would need to be a part of a publicity program to normalize incontinence.
It's not.
It's just a condition of the human body that happens to some of us. But because the instant association occurs between incontinence and babies, things get all mucked up. And it gets worse when the most logical treatment, diapers, is thrown into the mix.
Depends did a series of commercials a few years ago touting itself as simply "a different kind of underwear," which of course is exactly what a diaper is. But it's going to take a whole lot more than some commercials to change the minds of America. And I suspect I know where we need to start: the major media.
Far beyond commercials, the major media influence American culture in ways it's difficult to measure. It was a whole lot easier to imagine a black President after seeing so many of them on TV and in the movies for so many years, paving the way for Barack Obama. LGBT rights, too, have been influenced by portrayals in the media and by major celebrities who have come out. Our films and TV programs don't follow our society; more often, they lead the way.
To this end, I suggest that what ultimately can break the stigma of incontinence and diapers in this country will be a combination of two things:
First, there will need to be some major celebrities who acknowledge their incontinence. And I'm not talk about D-listers. I'm talking about people like Clint Eastwood* or Ellen DeGeneres* or Harrison Ford* or Meryl Streep*. If stars of this magnitude were incontinent and open about it, can you imagine how the world would change?
Second, within the stories we tell on TV, in films, and in books, we need incontinent characters. I mean that isn't even hard. I just wrote a short story in which a 12-year-old, devastated by the death of her mother, starts wetting the bed and wearing diapers because of that. That is not the center of the story; the way she deals with it though is a character element of the girl. The story is 12K words; maybe 150 deal with this issue. It is not by any means an ABDL story; it's a mainstream story that happens to have a very strong and independent 12-year-old who, at present, wears diapers. I'm also in the planning stages of a detective novel in which the detective is incontinent.
My goal is to normalize incontinence. We who are incontinent and who wear diapers because of that are not weird or unusual. We are your mother, your boss, your mailman, the barista at your local Starbucks. We are your grandfather, your sister, your secretary, one of the players on your team, the waiter at your favorite restaurant. We are the millions. And we leak. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
*I have no information that these stars suffer from incontinence, nor am I implying that they do. I use them merely as examples of the kind of people who would need to be a part of a publicity program to normalize incontinence.
