WHEN YOUR GIRL LEAVES YOU ON THE SHELF.

🎧 aUDIO QUACK 🎧

(Skip me babbling on 3:28)

In the 1920s, a Listerine commercial targeted single women to sell their mouthwash by implying that the reason why women are on the shelf is because of their bad breath.

This is the transcript:

listverse.com/2010/08/15/10-sayings-and-their-strange-originS

“Poor Edna was getting on for thirty and most of her girlfriends were either already married, or about to tie the knot. How she wished that, instead of being their bridesmaid, she could be the bride! However, any romance of hers invariably ended quickly. There was a reason. Unbeknownst to her, she suffered from bad breath and no one would tell her, not ever her closest friends.”

Thankfully, life on the shelf is not seen to be so terrible anymore and is made easier when your friends are up there with you – friends like Helen. If it was only you up there, you’d constantly be breathing into your hand to check yourself, but because Helen is there too, you feel reassured that it’s not you that’s the problem; it’s everyone else. (Like the whole of the male population).

You’re having a great time with Helen. You send each other single women memes daily, eat all the brunches and go on girls’ holidays. You peer down from the shelf and see the moody boyfriends, screaming babies and the mandatory lunches with the mothers-in-law, and think, no, shelf life is where we want to be.

One evening, Helen gets taken to The Blues Kitchen in Brixton on a date with Greg from Hinge. You are confident that Helen will be coming back because she’s already laughed at Greg’s rollneck jumper. So you sit on the edge of the shelf waiting for Helen to return…but she never comes.

It turns out that Helen and Greg are compatible. GULP.

After two weeks, Helen has spoken so much about Greg that you know him like the the top of your cleavage. Greg is a vegetarian but sometimes eats bacon. Greg frowns in the mirror when he shaves. Greg did the 3 Peak Challenge in 2015. Greg’s mum is called Sue. Greg is so funny. Greg smells like the inside of a saxophone. Greg’s Karaoke song is Ice Ice Baby. Greg’s grandad was in the RAF. Greg’s second toe is bigger than his big toe. Greg goes into Greggs and tells them his name is Greg…haha. It took Greg three weeks and two days to ask Helen to be his girlfriend, officially taking Helen off the shelf.

So you’re left eating brunches on your own. You google how safe it is to travel to Rome as a single woman. (Yeah, it’s safe, just awkward). You see all these single women memes but have nobody to share them with anymore.

Helen manages to detach herself from Greg for a quick girl’s brunch. It had been a few weeks, so there was a lot on the agenda for the meeting, including bumping into Helen’s ex in Gail’s Bakery and a full-breakdown analysis of a text a guy sent you. But then Greg, unexpectedly, walks in with his rollneck. He sits down with a confident sigh and puts his arm around Helen.

“Sorry, you don’t mind if Greg joins us?” Helen says.

And just like that, the morning meeting agenda is thrown away. Greg starts chewing on Helen’s ear, and Helen is telling him to stop, but not in the assertive way you want her to, more in a giggly-girly way that only encourages him.

“Stop Greg!” gigggle giggle “Greeeeg!” gigggle giggle “Stooooop” gigggle giggle.

You go home seething. How dare Helen let a man fall in love with her.

The next time you see Helen, she’s in a rollneck jumper, saying she’s trying Meat-Free Mondays and claiming she is excited about the Oasis reunion. Are you Helen, or is Greg the excited one? You want to say. Considering that your most listened-to artist in 2023 was Kelly Clarkson.

You realise that the woman sitting in front of you right now, is no longer Helen, she’s Grelen.

You would call her out for changing for a man, but you did the same when you dated that beefcake from Putney. You started to wear Gym Shark leggings to brunches, and once, you even posted a gym selfie and hashtagged it #GirlsWhoLift. Helen remembers that time too.

She tells you that she and Greg are going on their first holiday together and believes Greg is The One. This news is followed up with a sympathetic head tilt. “How’s the shelf?” she asks. (Not in those words exactly, but that’s all you hear).

You smile back and tell her that you are completely off men after reading a worrying article in The Guardian that said, ‘being in a relationship makes women age significantly quicker’.

“Double the speed, the scientists are saying.”

When you get home, you redownload Hinge and bulk order Listerine.

A week later, a photo is posted on Instagram. Helen, who once cried when she had to walk the stairs in Covent Garden tube station, is standing with Greg in front of a mountain, wearing a backpack that can sink a baby hippo.

Caption: Let the hike begin! #CouplesWhoHike @GregGreg.

Oh, Helen…Helen. Helen. Helen.

A couple of days later, you are vigorously rinsing your mouth out with Listerine when you suddenly spot two hands gripping the side of the shelf. Who to appear? Helen. She pulls herself up, rolls onto her back, and catches her breath.

“Grelen! I mean Helen. What are you doing back on the shelf? Aren’t you supposed to be up a mountain with The One?”

She tears off her roll neck jumper, flings it to the side, and says, “I’m back.”