what, no intersex option? bigots.

for months i have been frequently fleetingly befuddled by sony's ad campaign for its bravia flat-screen television, the tagline of said campaign being, "the world's first television for men and women™." yes, i've typed that deliberately and correctly—this golden droplet of marketing sputum has been trademarked. it's left my brow furrowed frequently because i have been forced to take equal pause every time i've heard it and fleetingly because i dismiss it the second the ad ends, as i'm not interested in purchasing a television or in defragmenting the decision-making processes of the men and women who are interested in purchasing televisions. but tonight, for whatever reason, i cracked. what is it about this shiny box that makes it capable, at long last, after millenia of stereotyping, mutilation, glass ceilings, and saccharine self-help books, of bridging the previously boundless gap between the sexes? how has the bravia succeeded where all other projection media have failed?

well, it hasn't, unless "bridging the gap" is now a euphemism for putting little blue hats on the boy babies and little pink hats on the girls. in fact, sony's web site does this more or less literally, using distinct horizontal bands of the two colors to express to consumers how happily their respective genders can now coexist in a single space. (even on planet happy sony, however, the genders remain separate and unequal; the pink band is less than half the size of the blue and is trapped underneath it.) the site doesn't dangle any carrots; all of the appliance's secrets are revealed under two headings: Why Men Like It and Why Women Like It. in case any of you men and women out there are too crippled by your current asexual viewing experiences to know what you like and why, here are the bravia's draws:

1. amazing hd picture
2. wider viewing angles
3. broader color gamut
4. slim design

stop thinking now! these are The Reasons! you do not like anything else about this television, and no other television can offer you these things! and these are The Reasons for all of you. The Reasons are androgynous; it's your reasons for liking The Reasons that give you away on a gonadal level. the masculine appeal of wider viewing angles is as follows:

and you thought you'd only get to hog the couch. with a generous 178° viewing angle, now you can hog any piece of furniture in the whole living room and get outstanding clarity and detail no matter where you sit.

who needs a couch? climb on top of the trophy case! build a nest of empty beer cans and dirty socks in the far left corner! be the crazy frat-house animal that dumb broad—i mean, your restricted line of vision—has never allowed you to be! but don't beat your chest too hard about it, because for the ladies we offer the feng-shui-obsessed flip side:

why does the couch always have to be in the middle of the room? with the bravia lcd tv it doesn't have to be. its 178° viewing angle gives you 178° of space to design. so rearrange the living room any way you want. you'll still get an outstanding picture no matter where you sit.

the remaining 182° of space will be lost to you, as all space not penetrated by tv-generated radiation eventually collapses into a vacuum, but you'll be too exhausted from the furniture moving and hypnotized by the pretty colored lights to ever miss it. bravia is huge! it's shiny! it's outrageously expensive! and even if you go out of your way to keep it from being at the center of the room, it'll still be all you can see no matter where you look! just like the diamond that you know in your heart he'll never give you.

men and women are different. they like different things. but i'm pretty sure that when it comes to a television, we're all asking the same question: how's the picture? we want our images sharp and our pixels undetectable and our colors rich and true to life. but even the bravia can't serve up anything that comes close to the visceral impact of immediate reality, not that it appears to want to extend anything more than 1950s-era condescension and a gleeful passing out of footballs and feather dusters. tonight the commercial drove me away from my own television and toward my sofa, which i've moved not just out of the middle of the room but into a different room, a room filled with books and plants and paintings, all of which are quite vivid and utterly enthralling. after all these months, sony's marketing department has finally gotten through to me. from the bottommost recesses of my uterus, sony, thank you, for reminding me not to settle for eyesores.