“Axe Leaves Behind Its Legacy of Sexism by Tackling Toxic Masculinity”
“Now Axe has shifted its focus from groin to brain. While the brand’s message in the last few years has been less testosterone-laden than in its heyday, in 2016, Axe underwent a total 180-degree repositioning. It released a video entitled “Find Your Magic,” which now has more than 10.5 million views. It starts off by asking “Who needs a six-pack?” and goes on to show a guy with a big nose, a man dancing in heels, a fella with a big beard snuggling some kittens, and — gasp — a man pleasuring a woman. Old Axe guy would surely call new Axe guy a cuck…
Tom Meyvis, a marketing professor at New York University, thinks it’s important to note that “Axe is not acknowledging its past” in these new ads. He explains that brands that reposition sometimes poke fun at their past, proving they’re in on the joke and owning their previous message, before presenting new branding. Axe didn’t do this, probably banking on the fact that new customers wouldn’t know about its former womanizing ways”
So. Weird. As someone who was a teenager in the mid-2000s, Axe was like the perfect representation of everything that was wrong with society. It was just this thing that was waiting to ruin your day; it was always applied too liberally and the over-scented individual could be counted on to be extra assholeish.
Prime Axe memory: the time two guys in my 9th grade history class showed up 15 minutes late because they had somehow gotten caught in some stink bombs (?) and their solution was to drench themselves in Axe. This they gladly announced as they burst into the classroom, and we all recoiled, and one girl asked to leave because (she claimed) she was allergic to Axe.
Later that year our teacher had to leave the room for like 20 minutes and they started digging around the shelves and found some sugar packets and convinced a bunch of people to snort sugar.
I kind of want an anthology of Axe stories now.
Related: Essay by a woman who wore Axe for a week to troll her son and it’s perfect
