The commercials for Axe Body Spray have always appealed to men’s worst instincts, and recently they’ve taken an even more disturbing turn. See, Axe used to put out commercials like this:
This one is an absurdly ramped-up version of the standard body-spray commercial in which a guy puts on Axe (or Tag, or whatever) in a public place, causing a bunch of hot women to go mad with lust and physically throw themselves at him. The message is as clear as it is familiar: our product will compel hot women to have vigorous monkey sex with you. It’s a little gross, but it’s nothing new. I think they’ve found versions of this message in the ruins of Herculaneum. Even so, there has always been something vaguely sinister about the body spray ads, what with their focus on physical violence and pharmaceutical mind-control. And then the ads changed…
The basic formula is the same. A dude wears Axe, so he gets an unrealistic level of attention from a hot woman. But there’s a crucial difference: the woman’s response isn’t really sexual anymore. Instead, she just acts like an idiot and embarrasses herself. The earlier ads always implied that the Axe-wearer and the girl(s) that tackled him would engage in some protracted boinking just as soon as the commercial ended. The new ads do nothing of the kind. It’s quite clear from the expression on the woman’s face that she is mortified, and wants nothing more to do with the guy she just fondled. With these commercials, Axe has definitively stopped marketing to men who desire beautiful women and want to sleep with them, and started marketing to men who resent beautiful women and want to degrade them.