What's striking to me is that by now I have subconsciously "written off" Axe commercials as "bound to be sexist and railroad-minded", which has the unexpected effect of making me ignore them, doing or saying or thinking nothing about them because it's more convenient to me than saying "WHAT THE $#@!" over and over again every time there's a commercial break.
And this ad from Axe is subversive in that it shifts the focus from "Isn't this guy hot" or "Isn't this girl hot" to "Don't you want to have sex AND save the world?", while still subliminally demonstrating the primacy of male bathers over female bathers.
It could have just as easily shown a man and a woman showering separately, then a man and a woman showering together, then a man and a woman each showering with an "attractive stranger". That it focuses on the male prot-axe-gonist embeds the real message: that this is a product for men, and that the benefits of this product are only intended for men.
I like the Degree commercial. But it makes me think of something else, too:
Why is it that a British woman is "unapologetically strong", but an American woman is "sexily world-conscious"?
What's striking to me is that by now I have subconsciously "written off" Axe commercials as "bound to be sexist and railroad-minded", which has the unexpected effect of making me ignore them, doing or saying or thinking nothing about them because it's more convenient to me than saying "WHAT THE $#@!" over and over again every time there's a commercial break.
And this ad from Axe is subversive in that it shifts the focus from "Isn't this guy hot" or "Isn't this girl hot" to "Don't you want to have sex AND save the world?", while still subliminally demonstrating the primacy of male bathers over female bathers.
It could have just as easily shown a man and a woman showering separately, then a man and a woman showering together, then a man and a woman each showering with an "attractive stranger". That it focuses on the male prot-axe-gonist embeds the real message: that this is a product for men, and that the benefits of this product are only intended for men.
I like the Degree commercial. But it makes me think of something else, too:
Why is it that a British woman is "unapologetically strong", but an American woman is "sexily world-conscious"?