Advice for love-hungry ' consumers'

The Last Straw: It's Valentine's Day and the thoughts of people everywhere turn to love. If you're young and unattached, February 14th can be the chance to meet that special someone. But if you're older and unattached and you've read the latest self-help book from the US, today promises optimum conditions for marketing your "product" to a love-hungry "consumer".

That would be the advice of Rachel Greenwald, whose Find a Husband After 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School was a big hit across the Atlantic. Presumably based on something else Greenwald learned at Harvard, the book has been renamed for European release: How to Find a Husband After Thirty. But despite the cunningly expanded audience, the message remains the same. A single woman should use every means available to make her "brand" more attractive to men: plastic surgery; advertising; moving to a smaller town; whatever.

It's a message that has feminists pulling their hair out (which, incidentally, would be one of Greenwald's more basic tips). But it may be some consolation to them to reflect that it's not just women who are being driven to desperate measures to match the unrealistic expectations of the marketplace.

I see the US space agency has been accused of touching up its pictures of Mars to suit the popular perception that the planet is red. Mars appears red mainly because of atmospheric dust. Up close, it's kind of brown. But, apparently, NASA applied a little rouge to the planet's features by using infrared camera filters. And Mars is "male", as we all know. What will happen when NASA sends a probe to Venus? Will we be waiting ages for the first pictures while the planet makes herself up?

Anyway, getting back to the point, the good news for Greenwald enthusiasts is that the male consumer is not very sophisticated - a point brought home to me recently by the Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms, which includes an entry for "aftershave".

I can honestly say I have never bought aftershave (and the nearest I've come to using it was when a relative once bought me a Hi Karate gift-pack, which - after reflection - I decided to donate to charity). But equally, it had never occurred to me before that aftershave was simply, as the dictionary says, "perfume for men".

The product is generally advertised as a form of pain relief, for the burning sensation that (in advertisements) shaving causes. If you fall for this premise, the aftershave companies then gently ease you into the world of perfume by - for example - using the word "homme" for "man". Buy a scented product "pour homme", and you're halfway to imagining yourself French instead of Irish, with a name like "Marcel" rather than "Mick". From there it's only a short, onward journey to your feminine side.

But without ever buying the product, I bought the idea that aftershave had some vaguely scientific justification. The thought was especially persuasive in an era of multiple razor-blades, when our follicles were being assaulted like never before.

Maybe Old Spice had stress-relieving properties, I would think, before being (deliberately) distracted by images of surfing.

Greenwald followers can also take comfort from the US razor wars, where the latest news is that Schick/Wilkinson Sword has beaten Gillette's threat of an injunction against its four-blade Quattro. It's unclear where this leaves Schick's counter-suit: that Gillette's three-blade version cannot now claim to be "the best a man can get".

And anyway, it's probably only the first of many battles for dominant position in the shaving market's key "moron" sector.

But the person I feel sorry for is William of Occam, the 13th-century Franciscan philosopher.

As you probably know, William left us a famous principle: "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" ("Entities ought not to be multiplied except from necessity"). William's idea was that everything should be kept as simple as possible, a rule that became known as "Occam's razor", because "it cuts away superfluities".

It's a cruel irony that, in the 21st century, William's dictum should be so grievously ignored by - of all people - razor manufacturers. And you don't have to be a prophet to see where things will go next. I bet Gillette is already working on a revolutionary five-blade model, called the "Occam", in which the first blade cuts and gently extends your superfluities, allowing the second blade to get closer still, and so on and so on.

After the fifth blade, there'll be a lubricating strip infused with special aftershave, dispensing pain relief and post-traumatic stress counselling to the areas formerly occupied by superfluities. It goes without saying that the product will be a huge success.

Because if there's one thing they teach you at Harvard Business School, it's that the consumer will believe anything.