Buy Or Don’t Buy

Check out this amazing ad and try and guess what product it’s for. I’ll give you a hint: It’s super-tasteful.

This ad is screaming to be a post on The XX Factor.  Where to start? In some respects, it’s a milestone. As far as I know, it’s the first razor commercial to suggest that women don’t just shave their legs. And it’s remarkably non-girly: It doesn’t speak in the familiar commercial baby talk of ’soft’ and ’smooth’ and ‘protective.’

But there’s something about the weird way this ad’s done that makes me think it was made by a bunch of male ad executives (and not cool ones like Don Draper either - this is clearly the work of a Pete or a Salvatore.) First, there’s the tacky visual pun: They’re literally trimming a bush. And in case that was too subtle, notice that all the shrubbery is at convenient waist-height and gets shaped into suggestive triangles and landing strips. And  not to get all Women’s Studies on you here, but there’s also the unsettling implication that your body is some sort of wild uncontrollable thing to be embarrassed about until you tame it with a Schick product.

Friendly BoDB ladybloggers, I’d like your opinions. Am I protesting too much, or do you also suspect that this ad was dreamt up by some chain-smoking, sexually-harassing alcoholics?