Is A Mild Capacity For Basic Human Empathy Giving YOU A Headache? There's A Pill For That!

And it's gentle on the stomach!

‘Kitten Smudge was the first in the box, which bothered Koto and Champagne not a bit.’ Courtesy of our friend Madeleine!

Happy Weekend!

This week, I bring you the gift of what has to be the weirdest ad campaign I have ever seen in my life — a series of ads from the 1960s (courtesy of the Obscure Media subreddit) that suggest that feeling bad about telling old people they have to leave their home because it is being demolished or firing someone from their job can give “sensitive people” a headache, and that they should remedy that with Bufferin, because it’s easier on the stomach than regular aspirin. Because hey, you don’t want to get rid of a headache only to end up with agita, amirite?

Now, I am the last person who would suggest that stress does not cause physical symptoms. I grind my teeth, have an ongoing Amazon subscription of Galeffi (Italian Alka Seltzer without aspirin, basically) and I currently have agita over the fact that the ginger tea I’ve been drinking to help with my agita is made by a cult that was founded by a guru who was credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple people (It’s the Yogi Tea). He died 20 years ago, so can I still drink it? I don’t know!

Now, I’m nuts, but these ads depict people who are having relatively normal reactions to things and then describing them as being especially sensitive.

In the first ad, a man who works for the “Urban Relocation Department” (literally two Google results for that term and one is referencing this ad … so I have some questions) has to go tell an elderly couple that they have to leave their building that is (currently?) being demolished and feels bad about it. Then the horror movie music comes in and the voice over says “Often, people who are sensitive to others can be more sensitive to headache pain. Bufferin is for these people.”

I don’t know that one would have to be “very sensitive” to feel bad for people in such a situation so much as not a complete sociopath.

In the second ad, a woman just tells her husband that maybe their son doesn’t want the gun the husband gave him because he is intimidated by what a great shooter the husband is. We then see her in the living room downing a not-insignificant amount of Bufferin (perhaps with a dash of Miltown) and giving me the sudden urge to reread The Feminine Mystique.

In the third, a man feels bad about having to fire one of his employees because of budget cuts, which also seems like a thing it would be weirder to not feel bad about. In the fourth, a college dean apparently feels bad about an unnamed thing the students are protesting.

Are we sure the problem here is “sensitive people are getting headaches and need some gentle aspirin” and not “people who are not monsters having normal human reactions to the world they live in”? Hard to tell!

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