it's ok to be lonely

There's a very interesting piece at Creative Review (CR) about the findings of Getty Images' Map Report. According to Getty, “advertisers will no longer shy away from depicting the individual without relationship ties.”
They claim this based on the purchasing patterns in their website, plus: a study of 50,000 searches conducted in the last 12 months, 120 re-branding exercises conducted for its clients, tearsheets from the 260 magazines read per week by its Creative Research department, and a survey of 500 advertising creatives around the world.
CR writes a very intelligent review of the report, acknowledging some of the insights while rebuffing the unnecessary marketing buzzwords (when will we ever learn to speak like normal people?).
Here's an excerpt: "It’s OK to be alone. While in the past, advertising may have conspired to makes us feel utterly inadequate unless surrounded at all times by a coterie of guffawing supermodels, images of solitude are the growing trend in global visual culture....So say Getty Images whose Map Report claims to “capture the concepts that are shifting global culture and will become hot themes for the world’s media”. Having spent decades deriding singletons as losers with all the social skills of a rock, advertisers now want to make friends with those of us with just the one toothbrush in our bathroom. And it’s not just because, with no family to support, single people are wont to fill their empty lives with pointless new purchases. Being on your own is now, apparently, an aspiration...It’s all wrapped up in an 11,000 word report which, though blighted by some of the worst marketing bollocks ever committed to paper, nevertheless contains some intriguing insight. We’ve read it so you don’t have to – OK, we didn’t read it all, it’s not like we’re some sad loser with no friends…". Read the entire review here.

men don't buy their own underwear

I was doing some research on a topic and came across this. And it occurred to me that this is absolutely one of the points that make men so different in their buying behavior from women.
Take a look at this excerpt from Paco Underhill's book "Why We Buy":
"Men have always bought their own suits and shoes, but women, traditionally, shopped for everything in between. Especially they bought men's socks and underwear. Now, though, that's changing-men are more involved in their clothing, and women have enough to do without buying boxer shorts. In Kmart menswear departments, you'll still sometimes find a female-male ratio of 2 to 1 or even 3 to 1. But in expensive apparel stores, among more affluent men, males shopping for menswear now — finally — outnumber females."
Very well, this behavior seems to be slowly changing, but I believe that there are still many of us out there who let their wives and mothers buy their underwear for them, as seen in this Czech report that says, "...almost 60 percent of men surveyed admit to not having bought a single pair in the last twelve months. Another 60 percent were unable to name any brands of underwear. Most Czech men, it appears, prefer to let their mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends do the shopping".
And apparently this is a truly global phenomenon, as shown in this New Zealander history project, where one of the tasks is to "follow up the market research which suggests the majority of New Zealand males do not buy their own underwear...".
So, what does it say about us, men?
I once heard (coming from a woman) that "this only proves that men are just grown children". Go argue with that.