Chocolate: the edible euphemism
In newsagents in Hong Kong condoms are sold in front of the counter in bright Durex packets of every colour, flavour and variety – a cornucopia of contraception, if you will.
This baffles me as I come from the UK, where that shelf space is usually reserved for chocolate bars; prophylactics (ahem), if they are sold at all, are shunted into some dusty corner with other embarrassing items like Tampax and Preparation H.
I wondered: is Seven 11 is a one-size-fits-all advert for these by-the-checkout goodies? And why do they display their johnnies right by the counter?
This upfront attitude to sex – even if it’s just up front of the cash register – is quite refreshing for a buttoned up Brit. There’s something in most of us Brits that makes us want to titter when we see a box of Pei Dang Vi (in Hong Kong – literally ‘Bulletproof Vest’), many of us remembering all too well those days we used to blow them up to make spermicidally-greasy balloons.
It’s quite fitting that in Hong Kong rubbers fill the role that chocolate bars do for us at home – that of the impulse counter buy. After all, of course, sex does fulfill some of the same roles as a bar of chocolate. Literally, in the famous case of Marianne Faithful and the Mars Bar.
Advertising agencies in the UK would have us believe that chocolate is an acceptable replacement for sex. Those models in chocolate ads are constantly copulating with confectionary: dribbling over Flakes, undressing – sorry, unwrapping – silky bars of Galaxy Caramel, or runinng their lips and teeth over the shell of a chocolate coated Magnum. Not to mention the fairly sinister man breaking into a woman’s flat ‘All because the lady loves…’ (a rape fantasy).
Chocolate is an edible euphemism for us Brits. We get embarrassed if sex is too in your face, while Hong Kongers don’t seem to have that problem – ‘top shelf’ mags are on the middle shelf, and our behind-the -counter goodies are right up front (confining those poor Twirls and Time Outs to the back of the shop).
I do wonder if Hong Kongers’ upfront attitude to product placement translates to real life situations. Where in the UK you might get office workers offering to buy their crush a little something extra on the chocolate run, do they here pick up love gloves instead of maltesers and head to the loo for a different kind of sugar rush? It certainly brings a new meaning to the slogan ‘Twix Fits’.
But maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the chocolate-or-latex-covered stick here? It’s easy to forget sometimes that Hong Kong is a part of China; this eye-catching display of French letters might be a ploy to promote the Chinese one-child policy? The chocolate-bar-placement in British shops is famously good at attracting the kids (good old ‘pester power’), so perhaps these displays are a bit of sex education for one and all, getting the little ‘uns used to the idea
of wearing a raincoat?
Or perhaps it’s moving the chocolate away from eye level that’s important? A way of stopping child obesity, perhaps? Good thinking Hong Kong…Maybe if the UK swapped the chocolate for condoms we’d have less fat children? And less fat children having children of their own.
