Don't panic, dear - it's only wind

I worry about women. Or rather, I worry in case I’m not a proper, bona fide version of the genre. Because if I take the average portrayal of my gender during the food-related TV ad breaks as standard, I’m not really doing a very good job of this girly thing at all.

I’ve never been chased down the road by a chocolate muffin, I’m not stupid enough to believe that the right combinations of vitamins can “melt fat away” and if chocolate doesn’t have enough calories in it I don’t have to “find new ways to be naughty”. Further to this, my version of “being naughty” doesn’t involve either trampolining, spraying the gardener with a hose or burying me fella’s DVDs.

I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t need a slimming class instructor to explain to me that I’m not obliged to eat their mushed up, snot-sprinkled leftovers. I’m confident too that if ‘dad’ dressed up in (bad) drag and brought a bucket of fried chicken home, I wouldn’t react as though I’d just won a three week cruise around the Med. Give him a makeup lesson, yes. But feed the family a bucket of misery? No way.

When I “feel bloated”, it’s because I am bloated ... with curry and two bottles of wine from the night before. So instead of frowning prettily and rubbing my tummy gently before reaching for the yoghurt, I just fart. And if that doesn’t get rid of the ‘bloating’, I don’t use the “my handbag is full” analogy to explain to the pharmacist that I’m in search of laxatives.

What’s wrong with the ad men (and judging by these examples, they must surely be men); don’t they know that real women have bowels?