A few days ago on Facebook, Leith Chu wondered, about Dude Wipes from the Dude Products people:
Why hasn’t anybody mentioned these before? (link)
The Dude Products Dude Wipes Box of 30 [$9.99] on Amazon:
The description on this site:
There is nothing like the feeling of being clean!! After a long training session wipe down with a Dudewipe for a Fresh Scent not a Baby wipe scent. DudeWipes are wallet-sized and perfect for any person who wants to keep up their hygiene no matter where they are or what they’re doing. These wipes are a great complement to toilet paper, pre or post gym clean up, or to simply keep hands, face, and other areas Fresh and Clean. FINALLY!!!!!! A hygiene product that doesn’t smell like a baby.
Is this (to some degree) a serious product, designed to appeal to men who feel the need to assert their masculinity against babies (not to mention the elderly and the infirm, giving three groups who lack manliness and probably also the smell of a man, and of course women, who are totally out of it on both fronts)? There is plenty of male paranoia out there, but the closer you look at the site, the less likely it seems to be serious.
(Earlier wiping postings on this blog: on toilet paper, here, and more on wipes, here.)
An informational paragraph, though considerably more sparing of Emphatic Capitalization than the Amazon description, doesn’t inspire confidence:
Dude Products, Inc. was originally founded by a long time group of Dudes in Chicago, IL. Together we decided to change the way guys go to the bathroom and engineered our first product, Dude Wipes®. A blunt, entertaining and practical complement to toilet paper. Our core values will always be to innovate, entertain and keep you fresh. We’re here to change the game and look forward to the long journey ahead… Saving the World One Dude at a Time.
Thing is, it seems to be their first and only product. The site offers a couple of tank tops (STAY FRESH and SHITTING FOR MYSELF, with the url on the shirts), but when you click on those, you get a “product not found” message. The Dude Wipes are it, man, and they probably sell only as gag gifts.
As Leith pointed out, there are excellent unscented flushable wipes on the market, for instance in the Cottonelle line (which I too would recommend):
Cottonelle® Fresh Care™ Flushable Moist Toilet Wipes
There’s nothing like that “clean in-between” feeling – for all-over freshness. Cottonelle® brand cares for your bottom with a shower-fresh feeling that leaves you confidently clean.
(Clean, fresh, soft — all selling points, repeated many times, with minimal reference to the body — your bottom.)
And these are considerably cheaper than Dude Wipes, especially if you get the Cottonelles in quantity.
Inspired by Leith’s find, others sought out gag personal-care products in Amazon — and found the Blue Q Hand Sanitizer lines: first, Chris Hansen with Maybe You Touched Your Genitals (here), “the #1 after-genital contact hand sanitizer”, then Emily Rizzo with I ♥ My Penis (here) — both $7.95 a bottle. These are openly billed as gag gifts.
So all of this seems to be mocking male paranoia. I was fearing I’d be stumbling into an ugly pit of bro-ism. (Remember that we live in a world in which if girls take up a computer game, boys will probably drop that game because it’s become a “girl thing” — poisoned for little bros.)
This is on the sweet side, but not as sweet as the dudeism — actually, Dudeism — of the great cult movie The Big Lebowski (which I felt obliged to watch again before writing up this posting; the sacrifices I make for my craft!). The Wikipedia article on Dudeism is good on what happened to the laid-back philosophy of the movie:
Dudeism is a philosophy and lifestyle inspired by the modern-day fictional character Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, as portrayed by Jeff Bridges in the Coen Brothers’ 1998 film The Big Lebowski. Dudeism’s stated primary objective is to promote a modern form of Chinese Taoism, outlined in Tao Te Ching and Laozi (6th century BC), blended with concepts by the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC), and presented in a style as personified by the character of “The Dude”. Dudeism has sometimes been regarded as a mock religion, though its founder and many adherents regard it seriously.
… Although Dudeism primarily makes use of iconography and narrative from The Big Lebowski, adherents believe that the Dudeist worldview has existed since the beginnings of civilization, primarily to correct societal tendencies towards aggression and excess. They list individuals such as Laozi, Epicurus, Heraclitus, Buddha, and the pre-ecclesiastical Jesus Christ as examples of ancient Dudeist prophets. More recent antecedents include pillars of American Transcendentalism such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and humanists such as Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain.
The Dudeist belief system is essentially a modernized form of Taoism purged of all of its metaphysical and medical doctrines. Dudeism advocates and encourages the practice of “going with the flow”, “being cool headed”, and “taking it easy” in the face of life’s difficulties, believing that this is the only way to live in harmony with our inner nature and the challenges of interacting with other people. It also aims to assuage feelings of inadequacy that arise in societies which place a heavy emphasis on achievement and personal fortune. Consequently, simple everyday pleasures like bathing, bowling, and hanging out with friends are seen as far preferable to the accumulation of wealth and the spending of money as a means to achieve happiness and spiritual fulfillment.
The Dude abides. And he keeps his junk clean; he’s not a lout.
