More Realistic Adult Diapers
I've been down with a cold for a few days, giving me time to think about it, and I really wish there were a better adult disposable diaper. I know that somebody at Protex for Life was in discussion with some disposable makers to produce such a thing, but I don't know how it's going lately. The guy who was doing this had a Yahoo group to keep people informed about it, but it got shut down, and he kept opening new ones, but they kept getting shut down, and I got lost and don't know where they are now. Somebody was joining those groups just to report on them to Yahoo, which is pure evil.

But back to diapers. If I were talking to a diaper manufacturer, I would argue it something like this: when I put on a diaper, I want to feel safe and secure that there won't be any leaks. I'm not interested so much in a paper-thin discreet diaper -- the most discreet diaper in the world stops being undetectable as soon as a leak happens. I want to lie down in bed in any position and know that if there's an accident, I'm not going to have to wash the sheets. That means that I'm interested in thickness, because feeling a thick diaper makes me feel more confident that I'm leakproof, and in having that thickness all over, even in the sides, so I feel protected in any sleeping or moving position.

A lot of these problems have already been solved for baby diapers, but somehow the solutions aren't really being used in adult diapers. Here's how I know: How much taller is an adult than a baby? Let's say it's 3 times. Diaper manufacturers have already figured out that they have to make adult diapers about 3 times longer and 3 times wider than baby diapers. But they make them out of the same material, meaning that's 9 times the absorbent area -- although they usually cut out the absorbency from the sides of the diaper and concentrate it down the center. But this same adult's bladder is about 3 times bigger than the baby's, not just in 2 dimensions, but in all 3. We are talking about something like 27 times the volume that has to be absorbed by this diaper with 9 times the absorbency. Adult diapers need to have 3 times the thickness of baby diapers as well as 3 times the length and width!

Now, 3 times the absorbency would also work. But since I can't tell just by looking at or feeling a diaper how absorbent its space-age gel materials are, I'm really only reassured by a thick diaper.

Tapes are another problem that has been solved for baby diapers, if only the adult diaper manufacturers would see. If they scaled up the single tape that baby diapers have on each side so that it was three times as long and wide, they would only need to have one on each side, instead of two or even three, which some adult disposables seem determined to use. One large tape per side would be faster to put on and take off than two or three.

As for color, the question is who is going to see your diapers, and do you want them to know when your diaper is wet? For example, if a caregiver is changing you, it's easiest for them if they can tell by looking when you need a change. In this case, the old standby, white, is definitely the best color, with no confusing colors or patterns to get in the way. Maybe those wetness indicator strips too, though sometimes those things change color just when there's a humid environment, as in when the wearer is sweating, rather than when the diaper really needs changing, but I digress. There's also a place for colored or patterned diapers too, if you're in a situation where somebody might chance see your diapers and you don't want them to know what they are or whether they're wet (as in under a skirt). And then there are those who treat their diaper-wearing with a sense of childlike humor and want little teddy bears or balloons on their diapers; what is wrong with that?

At least some of the innovations from baby diapers are making it to adult diapers, like leak guards and elastic leg gathers, but the manufacturers need to look at what their customers want. Do they want paper-thin disposable panties that feel like they'll leak at the drop of a hat, or do they want serious protection, so worries about those dreaded diaper leaks are the furthest thing from their minds?

True, if adult diaper makers made diapers like this, adult diapers would be much more like baby diapers, nice and thick all around with one tape on each side, and maybe with some interesting colors or prints. I might have an ulterior motive there. :-) But there's this drive to make them different from baby diapers, as if the majority of customers care about that as opposed to practicality.
- posted by LilJennie @ 09:54 - View/Post Comments (How many right now? 0.)

CSI Episode
Well, the CBS crime drama "CSI" (the original one, not the spinoffs) did an episode which featured an adult baby. It aired Thursday night. The AB/DL groups were all talking about this episode, "King Baby," before it aired, and one person even included a preliminary plot summary (not full of spoilers; it had the sort of plot detail you might find in TV Guide -- maybe that's where they got it; I don't know).

Anyway, without spoiling the episode for those in other countries who will be seeing it eventually, I think it was pretty well done, and it didn't paint all adult babies with the same freaky brush. There was an earlier episode that dealt with furries, but it painted the entire furry community as fetishists who dress up in costumes and have sex in them. This episode was almost the opposite: it didn't deal with any sort of adult baby community at all. The CSI team investigated the death of a wealthy casino owner (the show takes place in Las Vegas, for those who don't watch it) who, it turned out, had a secret adult baby life. He was also cruel and manipulative and had a lot of enemies, but none of his enemies had discovered this particular secret.

There was an adult baby store that the team visited; there were some uncomfortable laughs as the lady behind the counter mistook the two investigators for a daddy and his adult baby boy, but once she learned they were investigating a crime she assumed they were from Vice and went on the defensive, assuring them that she was doing nothing illegal. Not the first time that's happened on CSI. But anyway, the store had other customers in the background, though we never focused on any of them or heard them speak. The store was called "Forever a Baby," and as it turns out there's a real Nevada store called "Forever Baby," but they only sell goods for real babies, not adult babies.

In the end, I think, the verdict is that this show was "not that bad," by which I mean yes, it was bad. There were cries of "freak" from the trained investigators when they found out the victim had worn diapers and enjoyed enemas and drinking from baby bottles. One would think that they've seen far weirder things, but of course the writers are writing for an audience who (they think) hasn't seen this before. They've investigated furries, they've investigated dominatrixes, and they must have investigated closet crossdressers (though I can't remember an episode like that, but then I haven't seen every episode). Guys with weird sexual secrets would have to be no big deal to people like the CSI team; you'd think they would have seen it all.

In addition, the episode did not portray the victim as part of any kind of adult baby community. I don't see why this guy would have been in contact with anybody else; with the kind of life he led he wouldn't have wanted anybody else to know about this part of his life, even others who shared the same fantasies. And I'm not sure we as adult babies would want this horrible man to be part of our community. But the fact remains that this episode didn't show any examples of adult babies other than this cruel, manipulative blackmailer (there were the background people at Forever a Baby, but they were more scenery than characters; the camera never focused on them, and we never heard them speak -- and the proprietress of the store was apparently a professional mommy; she was our only hint of what any other adult babies were like, and she only told us about them; we never saw them). The image of adult babies presented by this show was that they are isolated freaks.

The lady at the store said a few other things: infantilism is "completely nonsexual," apparently, and people become adult babies because "some men never really love anybody but their mothers," and some never had a mother figure who loved them. No other reasons were presented; the writers obviously didn't bother to talk to many (if any) real adult babies. They probably asked a few psychiatrists or read a few case reports (and the only people who end up in the medical records are people who come in with problems, not people who are healthy). The writers clearly took it from there, bolstering the usual TV fantasy world in which everybody not in the mainstream is sick. As it turned out, the victim's mother had been a heartless disciplinarian who never even let her son breastfeed because, following her own mother's tradition, she thought boys should be raised to be tough, so they could learn to survive in a harsh world. So the "reality" of the show's millieu is consistent with itself -- but it's not reality. In reality, people, both male and female, come to enjoy adult baby and diaper play for many reasons, possibly too many to list, and many things are meant by the phrase "adult baby."

The word "infantilism" was used only once during the entire episode, near the end. I thought that was a nice touch: it shows style to use the name of the topic only once. The victim's wife used the word, and she was clearly embittered by her husband and his peculiarities. She had unkind things to say about her husband and what he was into, but they were about her husband.

In the end Grissom had his usual words of understanding and wisdom. If you had all the money you could ever want and could go anywhere you want, he asked, where would you go? Some would wish for a nice tropical vacation, but what if you could go to Fiji anytime you felt like it? This man took vacations all the way back to his childhood. Not the choice others would have made, perhaps, but in a sense understandable. So in the end, the episode wasn't that bad. It didn't exactly do us a service, but it could have been so much worse.
- posted by LilJennie @ 10:33 - View/Post Comments (How many right now? 0.)