I’m pretty sure developing the Lynx (or Axe as it’s known outside Australia) commercials would be the easiest job in the world. One recent one that springs to mind is the one where the dude is transformed into chocolate. It’s based on a few central premises: 1. all women are hetero, 2. all women are “hot” (or in other words adhere to all the beauty standards of the kyriarchy), 3. all women are filled with a blind craving for chocolate, 4. something something, 5. profit. It’s the same basic rule book used in beer advertisements, just without the reference to sport.
[Unrelated aside: anyone notice how the new bird commercial for Pure Blonde completely fails to objectify women in any way? It also erases them entirely, but in a way I'm more comfortable with that. Maybe they've all moved to another planet, where peace and harmony reign, there are no traffic jams and all women are safe? Moving on.]
Well, Lynx has outdone itself this time with an ad that removes women’s ability control not only desires but bodies altogether. The new “Axe detailer” commercial literally straps the same het, “hot” and presumably unwilling women into machinery and forces them to wash the manly, manly dude with the foul smelling wash they sell by the bucket load. Apparently it’s selling an exfoliator, not the women themselves, but who can tell. Witness:
Creepy, yeah? Notice how this commercial removes desire completely from the equation. Women aren’t bewitched by this exotic aroma and forced to do degrading dances or run after a chocolate man (and really, there is no chocolate that good). They aren’t fun but ultimately disposable playthings. There are just machinery. They have no ability to do anything other than what the dude requires. Not drive, work, have friends, go for coffee or talk about anything. One assumes that women simply cease to exist when men aren’t present needing their butts washed (one at a time of course, otherwise it’d be gay). Actually, I think I’ve met men who wish that that was true.
While the chocolate commercial and the bom chicka wow wow commercial were bad enough, something sickens me even more about the detailer commercial. It’s that little thing that I like to call being considered “human”.
5 Comments
October 28 at 2:14 pm
One wonders how much money they spent making that waste of 40 seconds
October 29 at 9:53 am
You were right, that is incredibly creepy. The women are stripped of all their person hood and are literally just machines servicing a man
October 30 at 8:39 am
Lynx! Grr.
November 1 at 12:55 pm
Oh lord. I’ve hated these commercials (Axe here) for as long as they’ve been on television. They’re offensive, creepy, and sexist. But they are actually out-creeped by the Twix commercials, whose philosophy seems to be ‘it’s ok to lie to women if you use our candy to do so’.
November 8 at 4:18 pm
[...] the boss of your feelings, as tor explains; – entitled to your objectified, mechanised servitude – a shiny new coin shows us how Lynx/Axe th… – not being connected in any way with rape, as ludditejourno demonstrates; and – not remembering [...]