Remember when we first told you about the not-so-subtle “mow the lawn” television spot that was running in the UK? Yes, the one featuring dainty women stroking pussies (er, CATS, I mean) and making puns about shaving your pubes (“All that’s let for me to see are two-lips [tulips] on the mound!”). Need your memory refreshed? Go here.
Well, an eagle-eyed reader has spotted a similar kind of pube-shaving advocacy campaign over at the Gillette site–but this time, it’s for the menfolk. And lest you think body shaving is just for gay men, Gillette is here to let you know that the ladies like a smooth man, too. Everywhere you go on the body shaving portion of the site, you’ll find sexy young women oogling a dude wearing a towel. This is all to underscore Gillette’s pube-shaving message (and what a vital one it is): “Trees look taller when there’s no underbrush.”
Here’s the instructional video for how to shave your balls:
Promises of enhacing one’s sex appeal is the oldest trick in the advertising book, of course. Preying on men’s feelings about the size of their organs is a great way to lure them into buying razors. But what struck me the most about the difference between the campaign aimed at women and men is that the men’s vid is precisely instructional. The threat of accidentally cutting your scrotal sac while shaving is totally cringe-worthy–but I kinda feel the same way about the razor slipping while you’re cleaning up the ladyparts. Yet men need an instructional video? Is that because shaving (along with all other feminine activities, like cooking and child-rearing) are suposed to come naturally to women?
Perhaps the other significant difference is that, so far, the vid on the Gillette site is just that–a video on a website that men may find when researching this delicate issue. But the UK ad was, presumably, an ad that ran on television. It points to the fact that women eliminating or significantly reducing their pubic hair down to a lovely little landing strip is an acknowledged part of public discourse. For men, “mowing the lawn” is still part of a gay sub-culture–though this is now obviously changing, since someone can make more money if more men start doing this (and from the sounds of the comments over here at the Minneapolis City Pages, more men are doing this).
What do you think of this video? Is Gillette providing an important service for men by offering this kind of info? Or are they capitalizing on the lengths (ahem) men will go to to enhance their packages? And is this evidence of men being subject to the kind of pressures for the perfect body that women have long undergone?
