Veet Don’t Risk Dudeness Ads Wrong On So Many Levels
On a scale of one to wrong, the Don’t Risk Dudeness Veet ads have it all covered. Could they be more casually offensive much?
So, you know that thing where you shaved yesterday? A whole twenty four hours ago? Gosh, THAT long ago? Really? And in that time you’ve sprouted so much hair that you’ve actually changed your gender? So that if you wake up next to your boyfriend he will squeal in a way that is a tiny bit, you know, homophobic? Yeah, it’s a problem, according to Veet’s new ‘Don’t Risk Dudeness’ ads.
Say, if you wanted to undermine a woman’s body confidence, what would be the best way to go about it? How about telling them that something very natural about their body – like, maybe, their hair – is unattractive?
Words cannot even.
These ads are literally, like, literally saying you’re only a woman if you look a certain way. But spreading that message isn’t a problem. All the other things that are problematic about these ads (homophobia? Possible transphobia? Where do we even start?) aren’t a problem.
The problem is your body, okay? That’s the Veet message. Thank you, sweeties. Thank you for making an ad so horribly, regressively unfeminist we did a double-take to discover it wasn’t a vintage example from the 1950s!
JOLLY WELL DONE. YOU CAN HAVE A COOKIE NOW.
Disclaimer: The secret ingredient that makes the cookie taste so delicious is hair scraped off from all of collective humanity’s wax strips. Okay, maybe not the most grown-up response but NOM TASTES GOOD.
Update: The Veet ads got pulled. Hurrah!