Brawny Man: The End of an Era

They changed the Brawny man. He used to be a 1970's gay man's dream of a lumberjack. Now Chico says he looks like Elvis working at a gas station.

My mom always bought generics and icky stuff for food. We were always short of food. Those loaves of wheat bread with 1,000 pieces. The margarine where you get 3 tubs for a dollar. The sacks of apples with tiny microscopic apples. Yes, children can survive for years and years on frozen pot pies.

When I was very young we sometimes got food donations--like the giant cans of peanuts and hunks of cheese from the Department of Agriculture. I would bring some can of food to school to donate to a 'poor family' and then we would end up getting a bag of canned food several weeks later. We were the poor family! This free food always thrilled my mother.

My mother wasn't into cooking or eating but she was way into cleaning. No generics there. And Brawny has always been her brand of choice. Perhaps she had a hankering for that mustachioed macho man? Nah. She is immune to advertising. My mother takes cleaning too seriously for that. I can only assume that Brawny is a fine, fine product.