They know not what they do

I think.

It has been hot this week. How and unspeakably humid, which is how we do hot in Southern and Eastern Ontario. An air temperature of 28 – 34C, but with the humidity factored in, feels like 40 – 44.

That is HOT.

We’d sought air conditioning daily — Starbucks, Tim Horton’s, Dairy Queen — but I was beginning to feel that the walk to and from negated any benefit of being cool for half an hour. So one evening I took myself down to Zellers in pursuit of a wading pool, where I found two styles of inflatable pool. Zellers being Zellers, they were of course emblazoned with licensed figures.

So our choices were bubblegum pink Disney Princess, and baby blue Action Heroes. Because, you know, it’s important to start your gender stereotyping early.

Now, Disney Princesses make me gag, and since the “Action Heroes” were the far more innocuous Buzz Lightyear and Woody, I opted for them. Even though it’s a “boy” pool.

And when I got it home and inflated it?

Boy, it is a BOY pool. Just take a gander at this:

Holy Hannah. Can you say “phallic”, boys and girls?

And just picture Mary, blowing up the pool — which Emma and I did by mouth, given that our foot pump has gone AWOL — blowing up the pool and having THAT thing arise from the depths.

Wow. Don’t know my own strength.

And what, you ask, IS that thing? Apart from the, ahem, obvious? (The very, very obvious?) I wondered the same thing, but an investigation of the remainder of the contents of the box proved that it’s a MAST.

But of course!!! See the sail ? And a very masterful mast it is, all manly and upright.

The manly mast got me thinking about the other pool, the vulvabubblegum-pink Disney Princess one. Which had, not a phallus mast, but a canopy. A canopy, which not only shields the children from the sun, but makes a sort of a … cave. A nice, wet, pink cave.

People, people, people. This borders on OBSCENE. And you have to wonder… do the makers of these things know what they’re creating? Is this some sort of insidious, subliminal marketing ploy? Or is it simply an inadvertent expression of the designer’s subconscious?

But really. How could they not?

It is possible?