'Hairy Women Are Men.' - Veet.

I hesitated for a second to give more attention to this incredibly dumb ad making the blog rounds today, but I'm only human. First: get a load.

4/9 Update: ...Well, as you can see, Veet responded to the bad press and pulled the ad off YouTube, but it featured a hairy leg being thrown over an ostensibly straight man; the leg belongs to a hairy, bearded, thickset man, who speaks in a woman's voice as he apologizes that he shaved the day before but now is a little prickly. As the slogan, "Don't Risk Dudeness," suggests, shaving lets your hair grow back too fast, so use a longer-lasting hair removal solution or else your partner will think you're unappealingly masculine.

Roo Ciambriello has laid out five big problems with the spot in a post at AdFreak, all of which are on point...and yet it turns out I have more to add.

Like: I would say it's more than "mildly homophobic." Look at this still of the "official" guy in the ad when he gets a thighful of his partner's leg hair.

He's clutching the sheets protectively around himself as he stares in terror at the beast he's just woken up with -- not just because his/her leg hair touching his is such a giant turnoff in and of itself, but because the ad opens with evidence that they enjoyed a sexy assignation the night before: witness her discarded clothes on his side of the bed.

(Judging by the mess, she was in the middle of reapplying her lipstick when he started molesting her.)

So the guy goes to bed with a hot lady, and wakes up with a revolting, hirsute bro, which would seem to be more of a nightmare for the GUY in this scenario -- by which I mean for this guy, the guy who feels his manhood is at risk due to the kind of people he's getting in bed with. And yet I guess the way the patriarchy works is that it makes the WOMAN internalize this kind of body horror, on his behalf, and do whatever it takes to keep him from thinking of her as some kind of animal, which in this case means spending her salary -- 82% of whatever a man in the same job makes, apparently -- on chemical goop that burns hair off her body.

And you could do that too. Or, if you're a lady who sleeps with men, you could (a) protest this fucking bullshit by not buying Veet, and also (b) don't sleep with men who are upset by the idea that you are a mammal.