What’s good for TV viewers and couch potatoes in China should be good enough for the rest of us. According to Reuters news services, China rang in the New Year "by banning advertising for sanitary towels, hemorrhoid ointments and items deemed unappetizing during meal times." The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television of China has already set up a hotline for viewers to report violations. Another new rule is guaranteed to send TV owners to the hotline as it limits the number of ads allowed to interrupt television programs. In 2000, a viewer in Xi’an became angry when too many commercials cut into his favorite soap opera. A local court awarded him $87. Unappetizing ads are also prevalent in our country, where TV viewers are obligated to hear about breakthrough solutions to personal problems that weren’t openly discussed only a few decades ago. If we did talk graphically about hemorrhoids or male performance, parents had no choice but to stick bars of soap into our protesting, little mouths. Other offensive commercials on our TV screens tout the superiority of certain toilet bowl cleaners, cat box fillers (complete with successfully filled scoops), and creams for unsightly foot and toenail fungi. Of course, a major hurdle in our country with banning unappetizing commercials during mealtimes would be to find times when people aren’t eating in front of the TV. With most of our 300 million or so population owning TV sets and at least 60 percent of us overweight or certifiably obese, watching TV and eating have become mutually interdependent. We can’t do one activity without the other. As a result of our eating habits, a similar ban in our country might find most of the unappetizing ads running between 2 and 3 a.m., when people tend to take a sleep break from multitasking (viewing and chewing). Couples still in the platonic, hand-holding stage of their relationships, if such relationships still exist, shouldn’t have to be exposed to embarrassing ads while they watch TV. Other awkward topics — their past histories with the opposite sex or even how they dislike certain vegetables — should be dealt with before the couple is forced to endure sales pitches with cures for feminine odors or jock itch. After watching countless thousands of TV commercials during a lifetime, the following observations can easily be made: It can’t be appetizing for anyone to listen to a commercial voice-over about male dysfunction solutions while they’re staring at a plate of wrinkled lettuce leaves or a fork full of limp, cooked spaghetti. The world will be a much better place when the only feminine products on TV are limited to those used outside the body — shoes, jewelry, perfumes and clothing. On the flip side, unappetizing ads — aired under the extreme notion that more is better — might actually help the overeaters in our country lose weight. Perhaps that fourth serving of food might not look quite as appealing or perhaps dessert will be out of the question after we’ve seen nonstop, back-to-back, tasteless TV commercials. It’s not as though we have nothing to lose.
