Sunday, February 7, 2010

I will shave. I will clean the sink after I shave.

As Jezebel writer Hortense just noted in her post, many Superbowl ads pushed products as means of combating emasculation.  In the following clip, a male voice over lists the minor infractions to "manliness" that he endures on a daily basis -- the Dodge Charger advertised at the end is his compensation, and "man's last stand."



My interest in this clip piqued at second 8: "I will shave.  I will clean the sink after I shave," simply because this is the first bit of pop culture I've come across that explicitly references female control over male facial hair.  Anecdotally, it's all over the place -- one man told me that he currently sports a beard because hsi wife told him that he looked like Homer Simpson the last time he shaved.  Clean-shaven men report that their girlfriends complain when their faces are rough (give it time, ladies). 

Freud postulated that shaving is a symbolic act of self-emasculation -- the tone of this ad suggests that women, and not society at large, are the ones forcing men's hands.

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