Urinary Incontinence for Fun and Profit

Once upon a time I used to get invited to market research for wine coolers and chip packaging; then it was for baby care products, but NOW look what they send me!!! It's finally happened. I AM A CRONE. Hello from Ekas Group Discussions and Select Opinion Leaders, We are currently looking for women aged between 35 and 65 years, who purchase incontinence products. The groups are to be held either in the day 10.30am or evening at 6pm in Sydney on Tues 12th and Wed 13th July and will last for 1.5 hours. You will receive $60 for your participation. Please feel free to pass this information to family or friends who may be interested in participating in this group discussion project. Please call Sally on 02 9976 7409 or reply to this email with your daytime and evening phone contact numbers. Thank you, Maureen Howard Ekas marketing research services. NOTE: if you wish to Opt-out of our email market research system , simply reply to this email and specify OPTOUT in the subject line End-AltaFX. Sadly, I confess I briefly considered pretending I bought incontinence products just to get the $60. Deciding that was too meretricious even for me, I instead fired off an email saying that as a 37 year old I was horrified to know there even was a demographic covering 35-65. I don't expect a reply, but I'm on a roll now so let's examine this in a bit more detail. Firstly, why 35-65? I can deal with 35-39, I will grit my teeth and tick a box for 35-45, but I see absolutely no reason to tolerate being lumped into the shallow end of a 30 year grouping like this. Could it be that urinary incontinence makes equals of us all? Sorry. I think not. Incontinence in your 30s can either be the relatively healthy by-product of a recent bout of childbirth, spending so long getting your three children to use the public toilet in the shopping centre that the sound of running taps while number 1 washes her hands becomes unbearable while you're still helping number 3 wipe his bottom, or, even healthier, being so pissed that you think you're in the toilet with your pants down when in fact you're in the ATM cubicle with an accident that you'll endearingly think you can cover by jumping the bar and sitting in the overflow tray. Incontinence in your 50s and 60s, however, is clearly the result of not enough yoga (refer to early Glamorouse posts) and too much tea. ENTIRELY DIFFERENT MARKETS. And another thing - why stop at 65? Incontinence certainly won't. Do they only want employed people who wet themselves? Well it doesn't say so in the email, does it? Do they only want people with some hope of regaining muscular control before dotage really sets in? Given the chance that this group is being called to better market incontinence products to existing customers, that seems unlikely too. Although if the purpose of this group is to test out the efficiency of those weird egg shaped things they have in my doctor's office that work like an exercise machine inside your fanny, it could be a very interesting focus group and I wonder if they sell the videos to fetishists? Which brings me to my final point on this matter - which is that EVEN if I did use incontinence products - which I don't, thanks to the divinely protective powers of the elective caesarean plus yoga, of course - and even if I were not grotesquely bent out of shape by being lumped into the 35-65 DEMON-GRAPHIC - I would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS GO TO A FOCUS GROUP AND CHAT ABOUT MY ADULT NAPPIES FOR A LOUSY SIXTY BUCKS. So there. I guess I do have some outrage left, after all. mtc Bec