So Instapundit notes that a New York supermarket has just put together a “Man Aisle”, to cater to the gentleman shopper, stocking “male items like beer, cereal, soda, beef jerky, hot sauces, barbecue sauces, condoms, and oh, Chock Full o’Nuts coffee” all in one convenient place.

The supermarket’s heart is in the right place, but this feels very wrong to me.

For one thing, you can only imagine the (confected) outrage if a supermarket ghettoised women in this way, putting the tampons, Ben & Jerry’s, and DVDs of Beaches all in one convenient location.

But for another, the move suggests that all male grocery shoppers are a bunch overgrown children looking for crap to graze on in between bong hits and X-Box sessions. Along with a generation of “kidults”, this is what happens when people take all their cultural cues from Hollywood movies like Ted:  an image of adult men as feckless couch-dwelling Dorito-scarfers, rather than productive, cultured individuals. It’s anecdotal, but I’ve done the family grocery shopping for over a decade now, and a lot of married/partnered male friends do the same – if for no other reason than they do all the cooking as well, and want to make sure they’ve got the right stuff.

Even for the single male market, it seems rude to sell condoms without also selling the ingredients for a nice romantic dinner. Or at least a decent omelet the next day.