Schick's "Basic Pitches" tell women their stubbly legs are disgusting

I am aware that most women in my society like to keep their legs and underarms clean shaven. (My wife is one of them.) But does that make it OK to vilify women's body hair to this extent?

It's just an ad for shaving stuff. It's also one with a movie tie in, to Perfect Pitch 2.

(Interesting side note about that movie: news.com.au reports that star Anna Kendrick upset Hollywood bosses by refusing to strike a "sexy" pose on the movie poster. Good for her.)

But back to the Schick ad. It's intended to be funny lifestyle humour for the average young woman. But the clear message that, female leg hair is disgusting, is reminiscent of the long history of advertisers telling women their bodies are horrible without the right products.

Via We Hunted The Mammoth

Women should (and do) do whatever they want with their own bodies. But these ads contribute to a media culture of bullying women into conformity. It's time we stopped telling them what they're supposed to look like.

H/T Ads Of The World

Sexist Schick for Men campaign ends up crowdsourcing feminism

In May, Smart Company reported on a crowdsourced campaign gone awry, for Schick Australia.

It started with a two-part YouTube video, originally produced by Schick Singapore in March



The first ad clicks through to a second video in which the topless model is strategically blocked from every angle, Austin Powers style:



Cheesy and sexist enough, but the Schick for Men Australia Facebook Page also ran a contest for dudes to upload their faces on a model's chest::

The Schick models are then lined up like a menu:

And then you end up in the gallery, emblazoned on the shirt of a now-mostly-headless model:

A feminist group known as Collective Shout hijacked the campaign by creating and posting images in which the t-shirts featured slogans and flames against the campaign:

They're still on the Schick page, and have been preserved as well at Collective Shout.

They're better in context, though, especially with the guy on the top left.

Sure, it's a small protest. But it's another example of how organized, online activism can make a mess of the best laid marketing plans.

Bad Valentine's Marketing #6: bearded women

This one was kind of unexpected. First of all, I thought beards were back in style. Second, I was under the impression that some straight women really dig the whiskers. 

But beyond that, there's the assumption that straight men and women want their partners to be just like them. Which is absurd. You might as well show these women with penises between their pegs and ask, "would you have sex with you"? I don't personally rock a beard, but it's a matter of personal choices. I guess a razor company has an interest in making people feel disgust towards all forms of body hair. Which isn't exactly contributing anything positive to the general anxiety young people feel about their appearance these days.

Finally, there's the whole transphobia thing raising its ugly head again...

Via Ads of The World.