Have you seen the new Axe commercial for their Cool Metal body wash? If not, pause your reading and take a watch…Axe Cool Metal, Keep Your Cool.
Makes you say WHAT?! Right? When I first saw this commercial all I could think was “quite a stereotype they’ve got there, huh?”
This commercial makes me angrier every time it comes on. Why would they think it’s okay to produce a commercial so rooted in a negative stereotype?
It has long been said that women cause and evoke men to pursue them. This definitely isn’t true but pushes the limits of rape culture. In this commercial they are saying “hey we have this great product that will keep you from raping a woman!” Now granted they don’t say the explicitly but c’mon now. They might as well have.
They play images of these guys wrecking their scooters, spilling chemicals and causing fires, generally “losing their cool.” But this is in terms of how much hotter the women are getting around them. What does this say about the men?
This encourages the thought that men just simply can’t control their own bodies when they are in the presence of an attractive female. What about this attractive female leads them to lose control? Why is it the woman’s fault? Women are expected to control their sexual appetites. I mean, sheesh, if a woman is overtly sexual she’s everything in the book but a lady. But if a man is like that he’s God’s gift to the female species. The male body is just a controllable as the female body. They can keep their sexual urges under wraps and they don’t need a damn body wash to do it either.
This double standard for men and women in terms of their sexual appetites has got to be one of the worst out there. It gives this open door to men to think that it’s okay to be obnoxiously sexual. And quite frankly, as a female, men like that are immediately checked off my list. It’s disrespectful and shows a great deal of lack of manners. Now, I’m not saying that you can’t or shouldn’t have a wonderfully tasteful sexual appetite. I mean, hey whatever floats your boat. But it doesn’t need to be plastered on a billboard either. And it definitely doesn’t need to be used as an excuse to take advantage of a female.
Unruly Bodies 
There are so many unsettling things about this advertisement- to begin with, the photos that are used as examples of women getting “hotter.” With each photograph, the woman is wearing less clothing and seems to be significantly thinner by the last photograph. This essentially reinforces the idea that a woman is at her hottest when she has a slim physique and is wearing very little. I agree with you that there are offensive implications about the male body as well, namely that a man cannot control his own body in the presence of a woman. What is interesting about the commercial’s scenarios in which men “lose control” is that the men hurt themselves as a result of seeing beautiful women- bumping into each other and falling off their bikes. But if we were to apply this male loss of control to the real world, there would be much less men hurting themselves and much more men hurting women. It’s interesting how the commercial chooses to interpret men “losing their cool.”
I think the comments underneath this video are pretty interesting. It seems like everyone agrees that women are not necessarily getting “hotter” but they’re just showing more skin and cleavage. Someone also makes a point in saying that women may appear to be prettier due to thousands of make-up products that are more readily available today than ever before. It seems that to be considered “hotter” women have to take advantage of the many ways to alter one’s appearance. Which kind of goes against what this commercial is saying since none of those women in that commercial are real anyway. I really hate these Axe commercials, I always wish I had minutes of my life back after watching them.