So apparently, “Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers” are a thing and how dare we stigmatize them.
The Stranger tells the sad story — no sarcasm here on my part — of a young man called “Smook” who grew up poor and had “little access to children’s toys or television, and no friends to play with.”
It all sounds genuinely horrible. But Smook’s reaction as a grown-up wasn’t to leave all that behind, but to indulge in being a baby again with a local Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers group.
We’re also treated to the pants-warming story of “Leo,” another member of an Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers group, who has spent “eight years embracing this side of himself and exploring Ottawa’s AB/DL community.” The safe spaces the groups share give members “both the opportunity to express their true selves, form strong friendships with people who understand them, and feel loved.”
The author of the story, Zenith Wolf, calls these two “kids at heart,” but they’re really overgrown toddlers in action.
My youngest is only 12 so I still have vivid memories of what it takes to toilet-train a toddler. It isn’t easy for parents, but for young children it’s almost always the second truly difficult physical task they master, after walking.
How the heck are parents supposed to get their kids potty-trained when we’re also supposed to be celebrating Smook’s big adult load?
If an alleged grownup wants to wear a diaper in his private safe space, that’s his or her choice. But don’t ask the rest of us not to stigmatize permanently infantile behavior while we’re busy trying to coax our actual children into becoming actual grownups.
And now it’s time for a VodkaPundit True Story™, which is just as historically true as it is apropos of today’s madness.
Thirty-mumble years ago, when I was still doing morning radio, I broadcast an idea I’d had to expand the market for Depends adult diapers. At the time, and for the first time that I was aware of, TV ads were being broadcast for the incontinence aids. I figured that while Kimberly-Clark certainly had a captive market, maybe there was room for growth outside the bladder-control issue community.
The first TV spot I conceived went like this.
Picture men sitting around a high-stakes poker table. There’s a huge stack of chips in the pot, and the focus of the ad’s attention is a twenty-something player with a solid hand. We get a peek over his shoulder at the full house he’s holding — and also at his collection of empty beer bottles. He’s having trouble focusing on the competition because he really needs to go. Instead of getting a read on the other players, he’s fidgeting in his seat. Then he remembers he’s wearing Depends. Our hero smiles a secret smile as he lets his bladder rip, makes a big bet, and the other players fold.
We hear the voiceover as he pulls in the huge pile of chips: “Depends: Just in case.”
I had a series of three more fake TV ads written and ready for production: The woman in the movie theater who didn’t want to run to the ladies room before the heroine got the big kiss from the hero; the ambitious young executive giving his first big presentation to the C-suite; the brain surgeon in the middle of a procedure.
I sent a proposal with all four to Kimberly-Clark but, oddly enough, never heard back from them. Yes, it was all a big joke, just to see if I could get a major corporation interested in a ridiculous ad campaign. But this was 1991 — a saner time — and nobody bit.
There’s a good reason for that, too: there might be humor to be found in grown adults using diapers because they want to, but there isn’t a Fortune 500 ad campaign in it.
Then again, that was then and this is now.
Maybe it’s time to remember that not all stigma is “harmful.” And when it comes to purportedly potty-trained adults with loads in their diapers, it’s decidedly beneficial.
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