Axe, a men's fragrance and personal care brand, fits in perfectly with competitors like Old Spice and Irish Spring. Advertisements for these brands feature hypersexualized men and women, and distort gender and reality. Axe's commercials are problematic because they construct gender in a way that portrays women as sex objects without any agency, and men as attractive womanizers. Axe has taken criticism for their commercials about the "Axe Effect", which purportedly makes all women attracted to the wearer of the Axe cologne.
Axe's new commercials appear to be less problematic, as women are not directly portrayed as high-maintenance and unintelligent, but they tacitly construct gender in a harmful way. One of their new ads, Axe White Label- Pool, creates negative gender stereotypes for both men and women. This commercial upholds traditional gender stereotypes by constructing men as intelligent, suave, and coveted by all women, while presenting women as sex objects who lack agency.
The commercials is from the point of view of a woman suntanning at a hotel pool, who sees a man walking down the stairs in the hot sun. She then realizes that he isn't sweating, which must mean... (logical fallacy) he is a secret agent! The commercial then shows the man fighting off a bunch of enemies, before delivering her a menu, as he is actually the pool attendant. The flow of logic, or lack thereof, in the woman's thoughts, is comically flawed, and the tagline of the commercial, “How you feel says it all,” accentuates the commercial's view that men are in control of how they appear.
Through its focus on both the main character's bodies throughout the ad, the commercial constructs body image, and presents the woman as a submissive sexual object. The woman is first viewed in a bathing suit, reclining in revealing clothing. The ad shows the woman from high angle shots, and the man from low angle shot, taking away and giving power, respectively. Even though both characters are attractive, the woman is unable to control her apparent interest in the man, while he is able to function perfectly. This combats the stereotype that men are always drawn to attractive women, and are unable to control themselves, but sets up other stereotypes about women.
The most problematic part of the commercial may be the product's tagline, which according to the commercial, only applies to men. It grants agency to those who need it least, men in positions of power. The commercial deprives women of the ability to be who they feel they are, while giving men the ability to be viewed as a secret agent if the feel like they are a secret agent. From this ad's point of view, women are only important if they are beautiful and attractive, but even the pool boy has enough inherent masculine power to be whatever he wants.
Unfortunately, this commercial is not an outlier in the market for men's fragrances and personal care products. Axe's commercials sell sex appeal, and construct gender in a way that they assume appeals to their target demographics. Commercials like this one are constructing gender for anyone that views television or watches videos on the internet, as they play repeatedly. Even though the message they show appears to be ridiculous and illogical, repeated exposure constructs the harmful stereotypes nevertheless.
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