Features

Body wash. No matter what the scent, the purpose remains the same: to help people of all genders maintain good hygiene. Yet, as is the case with most companies in heteropatriarchal and capitalist societies, the hygiene industry categorizes body wash products by gender and appeals to old-fashion sex and gender stereotypes to maximize sales and profit. This can especially be seen in company advertising. For example, in 2008, well-established American razor and care product brand Gillette released a televised commercial for their new hydrating body wash for men with dry skin. Their intention for the commercial was to present a relatable situation about men’s corporate workplace performance in order to appeal to their targeted male and class-specific audience. In 2010, the also well-established male grooming product brand Old Spice released a YouTube commercial featuring shirtless star-football player and actor Isaiah Mustafa in an attempt to expand the reach of their classic body wash product to a younger, more diverse audience, and to appeal to women who make up the majority of body wash consumers. Both the Gillette and Old Spice commercial ads use their long standing credibility to draw on idealized versions of classed heterosexual masculinity to sell their body wash products. In doing so, both brands actively sell to men who believe in these idealized versions by appealing to their emotions (posing a fantasy of a potential lifestyle or connecting them with a solution to a struggle) and reproduce harmful stereotypes that limit the potential of what healthy forms of masculinity can look like. 

 “It happens to every guy,” is the opening line of Gillette’s 2008 Hydrator and Body Wash commercial. These words narrate the morning routine of a visibly upper-class white male business executive. The viewer watches as he gets out of bed in his gray-toned, minimalist pent-house with sleek and modern furniture and heads to his large, dark-toned glass-enclosed shower. The man himself appears to be in his mid-thirties and is physically fit with visible muscles. The viewer learns, as the actor steps into the shower, that “while you sleep your skin dehydrates.” This is presented as the driving plot and dilemma of the commercial. In order to tackle this seemingly universal struggle of dry skin, the commercial addresses the specific formula of Gillette’s new and improved body wash product and how it has a solution. The product states it combines a deep cleaning body wash “with three times the hydrators for a powerful defense against dry skin.” The commercial’s visuals support its claim about the product’s suitability to tackle the issue of dryness via a unique visual effect, in which a Listerine-blue cooling-gel-like liquid appears to spread over the actor’s arms and torso, effectively hydrating his dry morning skin. The actor then steps out of his shower and right into his workplace as the commercial’s narrator mentions that, like the actor, the supposed male viewer could also step out of the shower each morning “feeling like [they] could take on the world” with the help of this product. The evidence presented for this is that the man in the commercial is clearly “tak[ing] on the world” as he steps into an important work meeting in his high-rise firm and is greeted by a female co-worker seductively staring him down. The actor looks happy, confident, freshened up, and comfortable in his (hydrated) skin and power stance. Then, as the commercial closes, Gillette’s infamous slogan “The Best a Man Can Get” flashes on the screen, letting viewers know that this is the kind of manhood that is “successful” and that they should aspire to. In order to do so, however, they must buy into the brand and its new body wash product.

The Gillette commercial draws on several advertising strategies to secure buyers, one of which is convincing the consumer of their own lack in some area of their life. In this case, that lack is hydrated skin and the confidence to exert power in the world. The former is construed as the cause of the latter in the commercial, which is why a hydrating body wash product would be appealing to a (patriarchal) male consumer to begin with. The commercial and the performance of masculinity featured in it provides a window for the potential male buyer to witness what their own life and experience could be like if they fixed what is lacking in their life with a necessary product -- in this case, body wash. The body wash product is posed as necessary in this commercial early on when it states the fact that “while you sleep your skin dehydrates.” Though this happens to people of all genders, the commercial specifically addresses men when it prefaces this fact with “it happens to every guy.” This informal hook that opens the commercial creates a common ground and universal struggle that can mirror most men’s experiences when it comes to dry skin. However, it is precisely the use of the mirror effect as a strategy that demonstrates the brand and commercial’s failure to understand that its representation is anything but neutral or universal. Instead, the commercial is selling a product tailored to a very specific type of stereotypical masculinity and in the process ends up glorifying that version of masculinity. This masculinity is one that is distinctively white, heterosexual, patriarchal, and middle to upper class. For example, the notion that a man’s power in the world is asserted through labor and high-paying law, business, or advertising firms, among others, plays into the capitalist belief that our value as humans is tied to our labor. Not only is the actor in the commercial’s worth associated with his work, but the most remarkable thing about his job in the commercial is that there can be various women in the workplace who are attractive and who may express interest in you and your sex appeal. The life-long message that our worth is tied to our appearance and whether others find us attractive is not only a tired trope but unhealthy for our psyches. These stereotypes are nowhere near being the experiences of all men, nor should they be. If the commercial is premised on the universal issue of dry skin, then there is no logical reason that its representation of manhood should be so narrow and singular. 

From the get-go and in contrast to Gillette’s hydrating body wash ad, Old Spice’s 2010 body wash commercial addresses women rather than men. “Hello ladies,” Isaiah Mustafa says, as he stares directly into the camera that slowly zooms in to him. Clothed in nothing but a towel, the lean and muscular (albeit somewhat fabricated given that make-up is used to create shadows giving the appearance of abs) Mustafa is about to shower, but before he gets in, he implores women viewers to “look at [their] man, now back to [him].” He says this twice before he admits that women viewers’ male partners are sadly not him. The solution to this particular dilemma, which is essentially the commercial’s plot, is that the male partners of women audiences start using Old Spice body wash to be a little more like him. He specifically states that these men should stop using “lady scented body wash,” which both feminizes men and presents the Old Spice product as an especially masculine product and scent. This bathroom scene abruptly transforms into a scenic ocean and sailboat scene. Mustafa remains shirtless, except this time he has on light khaki dress pants and a long-sleeve blue and white striped button up draped over his shoulders. He is performing a “preppy” and distinctly upper-class black masculinity in this scene. He continues to address the women audiences as he tells them they are on a boat now, “with the man [their] man could smell like.” Mustafa disorientingly continues to ask viewers to look at something in their environment (this time he asks “what’s in your hand?”) and then look back at him, and like magic, an oyster shell appears in his hand with two admission tickets to “that thing [his women viewers] love” inside. Quickly, the shell and tickets transform into a pile of diamonds that begin gushing out from his hand, and out of his hand and the pile of diamonds a red bottle of Old Spice is magically erected. “Anything is possible,” including economic upward mobility, “when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady.” The commercial ends randomly with Mustafa on a white horse (perhaps he is an equestrian) and the slogan text “smell like a man, man.”

The Old Spice advertisement draws on different rhetorical strategies such as presenting the viewer an outlook on a potential future, creating a comparison between Mustafa and the current partners of the women who are watching. This elicits a desire in women to envision their partner as Mustafa and men to envision themselves as Mustafa. The purpose for setting up the ad to speak to women stems from the company’s research findings that 60% of all body wash is purchased by women. Using Mustafa as the celebrity endorsement, someone you know, someone you are familiar with from watching TV or football games, you can instill trust and credibility through familiarity. The advertisers also decided to release the commercial during the time of the Superbowl, a time to construct awareness of their product as a wide range of people are watching. But to save money, they decided to release it two days before the Superbowl on YouTube. It instantly became a hit. Part of the commercial’s popularity had to do with its appeal on emotions in the form of exaggeration, humor, and irony in its stereotypical representation of a fit and handsome wealthy man who gets a lot of attention from women and who makes fun of a more feminine men. The overbearing stereotypical masculinity harkens back to a vintage and outdated commercial with a confident spokesman and presents itself almost as a satire. I think what makes it feel satirical, beyond its over the top plot and scene jumps, is the juxtaposition of new high-tech and high-res visuals with stereotypical and archaic approaches to gender, romance, and attraction. Mustafa’s lines are so fast and repetitive that it almost seems he has the stereotypical list of features a potential female partner might be attracted to memorized. However, despite this seeming progressiveness through the use of humor and ironic self-awareness, the advertisement falls short in this endeavor. Poking fun at itself created room to challenge certain notions of patriarchal masculinity which were ultimately left unchecked. Without presenting an alternative version, the idealized version of a stereotypical and quite cringey form of masculinity remains intact. Because it presents the fantasy to sell its product, it lends that kind of masculinity power. If they did not believe that kind of masculinity could sell, they would not capitalize on it as a marketing tool -- funny or not.

Sustained analyses of both the Gillette and Old Spice commercials reveal a set of questionable ethics and values that support unhealthy forms of masculinity. Their representations of manhood are not only narrow and stereotypical but play a role in sustaining popular and misleading notions of what manliness and masculinity are and should be. Even when challenging and poking fun at these stereotypes, such as in the Old Spice commercial, the representations fall short of critiquing prevailing forms of patriarchal masculinity. One could argue that it’s not the responsibility of personal care products to promote healthy representations given that they are deeply enmeshed within the webs of capitalism, as are most if not all products, and are only out for mere profit and economic gain. Yet, there is some degree of responsibility to be assigned to them and those behind the brands when they are actively promoting misinformed tropes and reproducing ideas of what they think manhood is, even if one cannot expect them to do any better or perform ethically in an unethical system. Soap should not be gendered to begin with, but until that changes, it is important to understand the ways brands and advertising agencies have the power to shape broader and unhealthy societal concepts of gender and masculinity.

Emilie's critical essay won third prize in SVA's Annual Writing Contest in the spring of 2022.