# Normal is the new abnormal -- forbidden adjectives **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 9, 2021, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554 "2021-03-09T22:19:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/1 "2021-03-09T22:19:37Z")
Advertising and product branding is getting so woke that products can’t even be “normal” any more. > **[Unilever set to strip ‘normal’ from all its beauty products and advertising](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/09/unilever-beauty-normal-inclusion/)** > > The maker of Vaseline, Dove and Axe says the move is a step toward inclusivity and will apply to more than 200 hair and skin care brands. > [@](#): > > Unilever says it will strike the word “normal” from all its beauty and personal care products and advertising as a step toward being more inclusive. What adjectives will be left? Will the English language (or all languages) be stripped of all adjectives? Okay, I’ve always bought shampoo that was labeled “normal”. (Meaning, for hair of “normal” oilyness, I think, whatever that might mean. Whatever, it’s always worked for me.) Will this specific formulation continue to exist? And if so, how will it be labeled so I will know what to buy next time? Or will I need to find a new variation of this product to match my no-longer-normal hair? (nb: The brand I’ve always used is not a Unilever product, AFAIK.) ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/2 "2021-03-09T22:22:24Z")
How did we survive the olden days when ‘normal’ wasn’t even on the bottle? ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/3 "2021-03-09T22:27:20Z")
I don’t know that a lot of products (shampoo in particular) ever didn’t have a “normal” variant. Ancient Greek shampoo amphoras were inscribed κανονικός (kanonikós, normal). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/4 "2021-03-09T22:28:22Z")
When “normal” is a reference to a particular skin tone, or hair texture? And what it means is “the skin tone and hair texture that’s most common among Northern Europeans”? Yeah, that’s absolutely a problem. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/5 "2021-03-09T22:36:41Z")
I would not actually know what “normal” would mean in this context. If it means the original version, call it that. If it means in between two extremes, then you need a name that actually tells what those extremes are. I won’t know if “normal” means “not straight or curly” or “not dry or oily” or “not thick or fine” or what. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/6 "2021-03-09T22:36:57Z")
Anything labelled ‘normal’ was not intended for me. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/7 "2021-03-09T22:40:49Z")
What would we call normal body temperature or heartbeat if not…normal? ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/8 "2021-03-09T22:41:14Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > What adjectives will be left? Will the English language (or all languages) be stripped of all adjectives? The article covers that. Instead of saying who it’s for, it’ll say what it does. So shampoo won’t be marketed to people with ‘normal’ (as opposed to oily or dry) hair, it’ll be marketed as replenishing moisture or removing excess oil or whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised if the word ‘balanced’ starts showing up a lot. When it comes to shampoo or lotion ‘normal’ always implied not oily, not dry. They’ll still have to find a way to convey that meaning to people who want that same type of shampoo/lotion etc. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/9 "2021-03-09T22:41:20Z")
Well, I hadn’t paid much attention to shampoo types, but I think the alternatives were “for oily hair” or “for dry hair” although I’m not sure how they were worded. So shall all shampoos now be labelled: - “for hair more oily than is most common among Northern Europeans” - ? “for hair abuout as oily as is most common among Northern Europeans” - “for hair drier than is most common among Northern Europeans” So is the problem simply the wording used to label those products formerly called “normal”, or the very existence of such products the problem? ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/10 "2021-03-09T22:42:08Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > What would we call normal body temperature or heartbeat if not…normal? Given that people of different ethnicities, so far as I know, don’t have wildly different body temps or heart rates, I can’t understand how that could possibly be a relevant question. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/11 "2021-03-09T22:43:53Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > So is the problem simply the wording used to label those products formerly called “normal”, or the very existence of such products the problem? It appears they’re being proactive, not reacting to a problem that was brought to their attention via some online backlash. Having said that, they could have just quietly changed the packaging without a press release. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/12 "2021-03-09T22:46:36Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > What adjectives will be left? All of them. It’s a shampoo bottle. Nobody’s redacting it from the English dictionary. > [@Senegoid](#): > > Will the English language (or all languages) be stripped of all adjectives? No. There’s a lot of slippery sloping going on here. Or as my husband likes to say, _throws up hands_ “Wheeee!” (that’s the sound you make when you go down a slippery slope.) ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/13 "2021-03-09T22:48:02Z")
These Boomer-bait topics all has the same answer: you can keep using whatever words you want. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/14 "2021-03-09T22:50:49Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > It appears they’re being proactive, not reacting to a problem that was brought to their attention via some online backlash. No, the article does mention backlash for this. It mentions several surveys which showed that some people (of color?) felt excluded by products labeled “normal”. But the one specific example mentioned was a blatant one: An advertising campaign in which a Black woman removes her shirt (!) and is immediately seen to be White (huh?) > [@Joey\_P](#): > > They’ll still have to find a way to convey that meaning to people who want that same type of shampoo/lotion etc. So how then? ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/15 "2021-03-09T22:56:43Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > There’s a lot of slippery sloping going on here. This is what people say when other people predict a slippery slope and you want to rebut that by saying “nonsense, this isn’t going to become a real slippery slope”, right? Usually that’s true, most screaming about “slippery slopes” really is absurd. But this reminds be way too much of a real slippery slope from the mid-1990’s that really did get way too out-of-control: The over-the-top debacle about the wording of real estate sales and rental advertising. Who here remembers that? ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/16 "2021-03-09T22:56:44Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > No, the article does mention backlash for this. It mentions several surveys which showed that some people (of color?) felt excluded by products labeled “normal”. The backlash was for the advertising campaigns, not the labeling. Responses on a survey that some of Unilever’s target audience felt excluded is not a backlash, it’s market research. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/17 "2021-03-09T23:02:10Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > What adjectives will be left? Will the English language (or all languages) be stripped of all adjectives? Yes, and all nouns and verbs too. When pronouns and adverbs are the only parts of speech left, their conquest will be complete! Or, more seriously, what hair is “normal” - straight, or curly? Light, or dark? Why not just describe the appropriate hair for a given shampoo, the same way all the “non-normal” shampoos do? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/18 "2021-03-09T23:02:51Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > This is what people say when other people predict a slippery slope and you want to rebut that by saying “nonsense, this isn’t going to become a real slippery slope”, right? Usually that’s true, most screaming about “slippery slopes” really is absurd. And there’s no slippery-sloping going on here, right? > [@Senegoid](#): > > What adjectives will be left? Will the English language (or all languages) be stripped of all adjectives? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/19 "2021-03-09T23:04:29Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > - “for hair more oily than is most common among Northern Europeans” > - ? “for hair abuout as oily as is most common among Northern Europeans” > - “for hair drier than is most common among Northern Europeans” Why should all alternatives be focused on northern Europeans? 🤔 ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554/20 "2021-03-09T23:07:56Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Yes, and all nouns and verbs too. “First they came for the adjectives, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t an adjective…” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/normal-is-the-new-abnormal-forbidden-adjectives/937554.md?page=2)