Not too long ago there was a Kotex commercial on TV that pushed a new maxi pad with Velcro wings. There's nothing wrong with advertising your product in a manner that makes it appealing to your target audience, however, the tagline of this commercial was enough to make me cringe.

"The greatest advancement for women since the push-up bra."

Beg your pardon? Are the good folks at Kotex implying that a feminine hygiene product is the best thing women have done in 40 years, before which the standard was set by a piece of clothing that makes breasts appear larger?

A Canadian designer named Louise Poirier is credited with inventing the push-up bra in 1963. According to Kotex, women did nothing but admire their bust-lines from 1963 until sometime in 2003 when the Velcro-winged pad was introduced. Kotex overlooked a few things. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963. Title IX came about in 1972 to bring an end to sexual discrimination in federally funded institutions. The Citadel admitted its first female student in 1995. After having 40 years of the accomplishments of my gender demeaned with an objectifying piece of lingerie and a maxi pad that will more than likely snag my undergarments, all I could think of was the f-word.

Feminism.

When I came to college, I hated feminists. I thought I had them all figured out and I wanted nothing to do with them.

I thought -- like many people still think -- that feminists were a bunch of man-hating, hairy, angry lesbians who wanted abortions made available in convenience stores.

It wasn't until spring semester of my freshman year that I finally sucked it up and took a women's studies class. I honestly thought that it was going to validate my preconceived notions until I walked into the classroom to discover it wasn't full of angry women who shaved their heads instead of their legs. To my surprise, the room was filled with regular college students -- some of them were even men.

I spent the semester reading whatever I could get my hands on about feminism. I learned about the waves, the triumphs, the setbacks and many of the other occurrences in between. Any hope I had of continuing to dismiss them as nutcases faded as I learned more about what they were really doing. Feminism, I learned, is not about women believing they are superior to men. Nor is it about women attempting to achieve superior status. It's about striving for women to be viewed and treated as equal to men.

Equal rights is not about "ball-busting." It's not about abortions for everyone, all the time, everywhere. It's most certainly not about yelling and causing a ruckus at protests simply to gratify our own "smug sense of self-satisfaction." Women's rights activists protest things that are unjust to women in hopes that if enough people collaborate and fight against a problem - it can be solved.

Granted, every group has extremist members. The women's movement is no exception. A woman who states that all men should be castrated so their power over the world is broken is not a representative of the entire movement. She may consider herself to be a part of it, but her views are not necessarily shared by everyone else involved -it should not be assumed that if one women's rights activist thinks that way, then the rest of them do.

Think about the priests who molested little boys. Do they represent the entire population of priests in this country? No. They're a few crazies in an otherwise good group. Don't let one or two radical bad apples ruin your opinion of the bunch. My favorite quote about equal rights is one by Danzy Senna in an essay she wrote in To Be Real. She said, "to be a feminist is to be engaged actively in dismantling all oppressive relationships." I think that's a pretty accurate summary of what Women's Lib. is about. We dismantled our oppressive relationship with the government in 1920 when we achieved the right to vote, and again in 1972 when we earned freedom from sexual discrimination in federally funded institutions.

While our friends at Kotex may have led us to believe that we can't dismantle the oppressive relationship women have with advertisers, Secret might just beg to differ. Recently, the slogan for Secret has shifted from "Strong enough for a man, pH balanced for a woman," to "Strong enough for a woman."

Maybe someday soon we'll see commercials for household cleansers targeted at men and commercials for motor oil targeted at women.

Or maybe we'll regress to belittling men in advertisements. Commercials for Viagra will claim it's "the greatest advancement for men since Rogaine."

Because right now, demeaning your target market seems to be the best way to make people buy a product.