The Soft Sell

Pity the poor pillow seller! By which I mean the poor seller of pillows, not the seller of poor pillows. Fuck that guy.

But pillows must be the hardest thing there is to sell. By which I mean “most difficult,” not “most solid and unyielding.” (Unless you buy from the SoPPs. Where the hell is he getting hard pillows? A Tang Dynasty ceramics wholesaler?)

Because look: People are super picky about their pillows. As well they should be! Sleep is important, and the wrong somniferous accessories can flat ruin it. If you’ve ever suffered a stiff neck, sore back, or general lack of rest from nighttime discomfort abed, you know how that shit can wreck your whole day. And yet, there are very few universal standards for what makes a good pillow. Some like theirs firm; others like theirs soft. Some like theirs large; others like theirs small. Some like theirs stuffed with the integumentary appendages of domestic fowl; others like theirs emblazoned with life-size likenesses of anime characters. People are weird about pillows.

And so, because individual humans are infuriatingly different from each other, there’s pretty much no way to know from specs or user reviews how well-suited any given pillow will be to your own needs. It’s a subjective-ass question, for real. You can’t online-research your way to an answer. You’ve just got to take a few different ones to bed until you find one you like.

Which, OK, saying it that way makes it sound sexy and adventurous, but it distinctly is not. No environment is less conducive to libido than Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

So here’s what you do. You buy pillows – assuming they meet a minimum standard of material quality (which, as fortune would have it, these do) – wherever you find them priced right. (Which, as fortune would have it, these are.) Sooner or later, one of them will be perfect for the particular needs of your sleeping head.

Or your knees! Some people put pillows between their knees when they sleep. Can you believe that? There really is no end to the humanity’s bizarre variations.