Veet "Don't Risk Dudeness" Campaign Commercials:
Veet, the world’s number one seller of at-home hair removal creams and waxes, has recently released some new television advertisements. The campaign slogan entitled, “Don’t Risk Dudeness”, includes three short thirty second commercials where we are shown a woman who forgot to shave, and the repercussions that has in her public and private life. You can watch each of the commercials here, here, and here as well as by clicking the links at the top of the page. Though the commercials have since been pulled and a sort of apology statement has been issued by Veet, the fact that they were even created in the first place shows that enlightened sexism as proposed by Douglas is real and still very prevalent in society. It claims that women must conform to ideal beauty in society at all times. Nothing short of perfection will be accepted and in fact, anyone revealed to be short of perfection will be mocked, criticized and humiliated. They follow the trend that all women must be ashamed of their bodies and need hundreds of health and beauty products to be happy and beautiful. Although this style of advertisement brings in more revenue to corporations, it’s wrong and harmful to women as well as allowing for the continuation of models of enlightened sexism.
Each of the three Veet commercials follow the same script. A thin, fair-skinned woman is seen either in bed with her boyfriend, in a city calling a cab, or at a spa awaiting a pedicure. Then each observer, the boyfriend, cab driver, or nail technician realizes that the attractive woman has either hairy legs or hairy armpits. The woman instantly turns into an overweight bearded hairy man who claims in the female’s voice that “I shaved yesterday!”. The boyfriend sits up in shock, the cab driver drives away, and the nail technician shakes her head in disappointment. Then the campaign slogan slams onto the screen, “Don’t Risk Dudeness”. Veet I assume meant to imply that if you had used Veet instead, you wouldn’t need to shave as often and could easily be “womanly around the clock” as the spokesperson claims in the closing statement of the boyfriend commercial. However there are far greater implications to these apparently simple commercials. Addressing the hidden meanings first, they imply that if you don’t shave you are a man, and that if you don’t shave you are not desirable and might as well be a disgrace to society. Each of the observers in the commercial are disgusted to find the woman is not hairless. These implications follow underlying gender norms and the expectations of women in our society today. As Douglas frequently explains in her book “Enlightened Sexism”, images in the media portray again and again that women should be obsessed with maintaining and conforming their bodies to the ideals. All women must follow these often hyper-feminine standards of beauty, or as the commercial states it is expected that you will disgust and deter all other members of society.
Another important part of the commercial to point out is that in each case, the woman was ashamed and embarrassed to have been caught with body hair. The apologies, sighs and even a swear reveal that the women know that they are as society would say, in the wrong, for their gender expectations. Veet makes it seem like they messed up and should be upset. This strategy of female shaming is not uncommon in the health and beauty world where corporations use this tactic to play on any insecurity women might have so that their products will sell. The problem with this strategy is that with every ad and product, the requirements for women to stay in the ideal feminine form increase. It becomes harder and harder to be beautiful according to society, and many women lose a great deal of self-esteem and happiness trying to obtain this practically impossible goal. Staying perfectly hairless at all times is just one of these goals. Another commercial where similar tactics have been used is the Dove real beauty sketches commercial shown here. Though it tries to be uplifting and raise confidence within women which is indeed a good change in advertising, it also has the implications that women are incapable of feeling beautiful by themselves, and that beauty is the defining factor in the lives of women. It claims that beauty is essential to happiness and required to live a fulfilling life. This is just like the Veet commercials which claim that hairlessness is required for the very same reasons.
An article I found in response to these commercials addresses this very shaming we see frequently in media. The author, Paris Lees, who wrote the article for The Guardian claims that women in society have seen and heard enough about how we should be ashamed of our natural states. She claims that all women know that shaving is required of them in society, “to a) not repulse men, b) not be stared at and humiliated when in public in summer, and c) yes, to feel ‘womanly’.” And that she doesn’t need “Veet or anyone else to make me feel any worse about my legs than I already do, thank you very much.”. In her opinion, “To be a woman is frequently to hate oneself. Absolutely nothing about your body – you are told and, indeed, tell yourself – is good enough in its natural state.”, and I couldn’t agree more. Society has shoved down women’s throats that they are never good enough, and can only obtain true womanhood by shaving and putting on make-up etc. However what I don’t like is that the author claims this is the ultimatum in life, that everybody is unhappy, everybody hates themselves, and that for sure, everybody hates shaving or putting on make-up or attending to other so-called femininities. This is not true. I for one, shave because I like the feeling of rubbing my newly shaven smooth legs together (something I know many women also like) and because I feel I don’t get as sweaty at the gym when my underarms are freshly shaven. My best friend shaves all of her body hair and “face fuzz” as she likes to call it because she hates the feeling of little hairs. Other women I know wear make-up not because they feel they have to, but because they love to experiment with it and try out different looks. There are thousands of examples, and Lees claim that women only do these things because they must is simply not true. Again, it’s just like the Dove commercial where Dove appears to claim that no woman feels beautiful unless she is told by others. It is a step in the right direction, but nowhere near as progressive as it should be.
There are many other problems with these commercials that are not limited to female expectations. The first is the irony in Veet’s campaign, a point which was introduced to me from reading another Veet commercial critique on Feministing.com. The author Maya writes, “the irony of Veet’s campaign is that the very existence of its product undermines the idea that there is anything naturally ‘womanly’ about a hairless body”. Veet would not exist if women were naturally hairless, yet they claim that women should always be completely hairless to be womanly. It’s ridiculous and I couldn’t help but laugh at Veet for that. Veet is also lacking greatly in diversity in these commercials and is rather racist in one. All three commercials depict white, tall thin women. The boyfriend is white and so is the cab driver. The only diversity that could be found is the Asian nail technician. This is hardly diversity however when you take into account that the Asian woman is stereotyped heavily. Also, the unshaven woman in each commercial says that she shaved just the day before. It is not possible for that amount of body hair depicted in each commercial to grow overnight. It’s insane!
Most women I would say do prefer to be shaven, but Veet makes it out to be a requirement. If you don’t shave, you are not a woman, literally. In their eyes, and the eyes of society, it is wrong for women to have body hair. It’s not fair that Veet and other corporations implant these expectations of women into everyone’s minds. Women should be able to skip shaving and not be mocked, just as women should be able to not wear make-up and still be beautiful. Fortunately the Veet commercials have been pulled and will not be aired. I took a look at Veet’s website to see if they had issued a statement on the matter, and they have. Here it is:
“Hi…this is the Veet marketing team in the US. We just wanted to let everyone know, we get it – we’re women too. This idea came from women who told us that at the first hint of stubble, they felt like “dudes”. It was really simple and funny, we thought. To be honest, the 3 of us could really relate to those real-life moments and they made us laugh. Not everyone appreciated our sense of humor. We know that women define femininity in different ways. Veet helps those who choose to stay smooth. Our intention was never, ever, to offend anyone, so we decided to rethink our campaign and remove those clips. Thank you for letting us know how you feel.”
While it’s good they issued a statement, Veet has clearly remained firm on their stand that hairlessness is the natural form for women and is most feminine. Saying that “women define femininity in different ways”, and claiming that “Veet helps those who choose to stay smooth” implies that all women were smooth from the start and some go out of their way to not shave. It may be nitpicking, but it really isn’t the best of apologies. In fact the word sorry isn’t used at all.
These Veet advertisements prove once again that women across the country are being pressured to conform to impossible standards of beauty so that they may keep their self-esteem intact, be seen as attractive by men, and envied by women. Shaming tactics are the norm and it isn’t helping anyone. Corporations need to understand that while this plays on the minds of consumers well, it’s wrong and is allowing for the continuation of enlightened sexism. In order to eliminate this thinking from society, we as citizens must voice our opinions and point out events of enlightened sexism, just as many did for these commercials, as well as work so that all women and men may choose to do as they wish with their body without being criticized.
Works Cited:
The Guardian Article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/veet-leg-hair-body-dudeness-adverts-women
Feministing.com Article: http://feministing.com/2020/04/08/having-body-hair-will-literally-turn-you-into-a-dude-according-veets-new-ad-campaign/
Veet Statement: http://www.veet.us/
Dove Real Beauty Sketches Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE
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