Last week, an ad campaign from women’s hair removal brand Veet aired during ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, showcasing the tagline “Don’t Risk Dudeness.” One ad depicts a pedicurist awkwardly handling a female client due to hair on her legs. In another ad, a male taxi driver refuses to pick up a female with visible underarm hair.
But the most controversial ad features a heterosexual couple sleeping in bed. The male reaches over, touches the female tenderly and, to his dawning horror, discovers that her legs haven’t been shaved since — God forbid — yesterday. In a cutaway, the female transforms into a hairy man wearing stereotypically female pajamas and later morphs back into a lovely (and smooth-shaven) bedside ingénue. The comparison of women who go more than a day without shaving to disgusting she-wolves presents a caricature so pronounced and outrageous that we might begin to wonder whether Veet is marketing hair removal or werewolf elixir — again, from one day of not shaving. It’s a total time warp to the 1950s, complete with the boyfriend’s comic, unbridled terror, clearly meant to remind female viewers that, of course, every hygienic thing we do is aimed at pleasing men.
You know something is out of bounds when multiple marginalized groups find themselves equally offended. Not only is the spot insulting to the transgender community, but Veet gives us a total facepalm by implying that — in the year 2014 — a couple in bed consisting of two men would somehow be abnormal. Who is running the Veet marketing department, Mike Huckabee?
Nope — perhaps the most disappointing turn of events has been learning that the ad’s creators were women. Cultural criticism from College Hill can sometimes feel like a run at the obvious — and these ads are about as obviously bad as it gets — but Veet’s most important lesson, maybe, is a reminder of the more insidious mechanisms of patriarchal influence. When women start disparaging other women, making them feel the alienating constraints of societal norms where there should be alliance and love, women’s rights advocacy, body acceptance and feminism all lose credibility and strength. The creators took to feminist platform Jezebel to issue an apology of sorts, though it, unfortunately, reads more like a sorry-not-sorry.
That the ads were created by women and happen to be so overtly sexist is especially ironic, because there are plenty of empowering ways to advertise a product like Veet. It’s a missed opportunity to potentially convince viewers that hair removal should be an individual choice, not a societal requirement. As Feminspire editorialist Laura Jane Williams writes, “[It’s] For me. For my body. Me, mine, I.” And if a boyfriend, husband or romantic partner is disgusted by day-old stubble as the ad suggests, it’s probably time you show him or her the door instead of apologizing or complying with any sexism. Tellingly, some men were angered by Veet’s assumption that all males are turned off by female body hair.
I am no more of a woman because I bring a razor to my legs, and you are no less because you don’t. And being hairless out of your own volition is just as womanly as being hairy. For those of you who might believe that this isn’t really about hair, I urge you to reconsider such a premise. Yes, this is, in part, about allowing someone, in this case a corporation, to convince us that we aren’t free to make a decision that corporations would prefer us not to make. But trivializing stark gender roles for the sake of selling a product, and said trivializations being deemed acceptable, is evidence of something far more significant: Patriarchal ideology has become so ingrained in our society that everyday sexism is the norm, not the exception. Let’s say no to those who find humor in shaming women for profit.
(If you are so inclined, let Veet know via Twitter, as others have done, with #NotBuyingIt.)
“And if a boyfriend, husband, or romantic partner is disgusted by day-old stubble as the ad suggests, it’s probably time you show him or her the door instead of apologizing or complying with any sexism.”
This is an immature view. I mean, clearly if it’s a dealbreaker for him, then that fact should be a dealbreaker for you just out of his shallowness. But there’s nothing sexist at all about preferring something about your partners body, and there’s nothing submissive about complying for the sake of pleasing your partner even if otherwise you would slightly prefer not to shave.
Of course there’s nothing sexist or submissive about making that personal choice for yourself, on your own. The point is is that this is a commercial advertisement that’s suggesting these ideas, not an individual expressing their own ideas about their own body and relationship.