Just when you thought the only thing you had to be afraid of while in the shower was Norman Bates… enter body wash marketing! Yes, folks, even your tenderest of nooks and/or crannies can’t escape subjection to gendered representations of males and females. Here’s an illustrative snapshot of some products I found in my shower:
Innocent enough, right? But wait, look a little closer…
Note that the Axe body wash, primarily marketed to gents, is called “Excite.” This scent will invigorate you! Wake you up! The packaging will inspire you to go on the prowl! To snag lots of womenfolk in slinky dresses! And get powerful jobs with powerful salaries and command powerful armies of sniveling minions!
Compare it with the ladies’ body wash here, called “Calm.” It’ll help you hysterical betches to calm right the fuck down! Stop whining! Quit your bitchin’ about PMS or the Patriarchy or whatever you damn ladies are always yakking about! Pull you back from the brink of hysteria! This body wash is a stop-gap measure before Yellow Wallpaper time, ladies.
Alas, even the woman-on-the-verge’s traditional retreat from the vagaries of everyday life as a second-class citizen – the bathroom – is no longer safe.
Ewwww there's Axe in your bathroom?
Back to Grandma's lye soap! Now there was a "body wash" for you.
Steph: Not my fault, I swear. Hattie: Is lye soap different than regular soap? I thought all soap came from lye? Leastwise, that's what fight club taught me!
Hahahaha. Brilliant post, Sarah! Gendered marketing is so blatant in its adherence to stereotypical gender constructions that it's just plain laughable (were it not for the fact that most of these messages were so normalised that they become interpreted almost subliminally).And – yeah – we need more women like you and the fin-de-siecle New Women to whom you alluded to wake us up from no longer seeing such horrific gender cannalisation!
Have I mentioned how much I love the phrase fin-de-siecle? Well I do. I know it's supposed to refer to the twilight of the 19th century, but I think we ought to repurpose it to refer to our own era. Fin-de-siecle neon leggings and emo bands, anyone?