Leave it to AXE to bring us Showerpooling just in time for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day tomorrow. AXE Canada, in conjunction with WWF-Canada, bring you “showerpooling” as an environmental measure aimed at helping Canadians conserve water by showering with friends.

I have no issue with environmentalism, water conservation or co-showering. But, AXE’s main intention is not water conservation. It’s selling a heterosexual male fantasy that includes slippery encounters with multiple women. Remember, these are the people that want to give you hair action and have a history of over-the-top sexually explicit ads that usually involve fantasized orgies of some sort (remember, “real men” are uncontrollable sex monsters). Does anyone remember the  2005 ad with the shower and a row of towels labeled: his, hers, her sisters, her roommate’s?

Or what about the AXE shower power tool for your man parts? After all, no “real” guy uses a loofah and the shower power tool “washes off  Jessica’s perfume off your ear” and “scrubs Jessica’s Mom’s perfume off your knees.” (Read the analysis at Sociological Images here.)

Earth Day 40 is big business and AXE is just another company seeking to profit from this event by selling the idea of one man having sex with multiple women by using their shower gel. Check their facebook page. It’s no big secret. Every image shows one man with one or two, five or ten women. And the last image in the sequence is the showerpooling essential, their stinky body wash.

Yeah, I’m all about water conservation and showering with my partner, my toddler son or some of my best friends. According to AXE, though, showerpooling is an act of water conservation that can only be performed by one man with several women with shower gel in hand. Afterall, “it’s not just environmentally friendly, it’s all kinds of friendly.” Wink.

If I’m going to conserve water in the shower, I’ll do it without a group ratio of 1:5 men to women, and without their sexist and toxic product (a toxic product doesn’t seem environmentally friendly, does it?). Or I’ll just cut down my own shower time.

Tiger Woods tees off in August today after a self-imposed hiatus and stint in rehab for “sex addiction.” Nike is now selling his redemption story and is received with mix reviews.

Top: Nike Ad using the voice of Tiger Woods’ late father.

Bottom: ABC news discussion of Woods’ return to golf and reactions to the new ad.

AXE, the purveyors of ad smut, are back with a new series of advertisements promising to give you “hair action.” The first one is the one that makes me recoil the most knowing that it’s based on the fraternal “bro-bonding” ritual that announces one’s hook-up victory. Ew.

My student, Roscoe, alerted me to the latest commercial for the Schick Quattro razor with bikini trimmer:

Enough said.

Haven’t been to The Culture Wars: Abortion Edition recently?  Check out the latest tactic employed by those parties interested in voting passing Prop. 4. (see why Prop. 4 is dangerous for teens), the proposition that mandates parental notification in cases of pregnancy termination among teenagers. This advertisement is absolutely ridiculous, misleading and characteristic of the fear mongering and scare tactics that the conservative right has been waging in the months leading up to this election.

As always, Laura Frankel keeps us informed and provides excellent commentary.  Click here for the complete story.

It’s uncanny how they’ve turned an issue of abortion into an issue of fear by using the idea of a sexual predator taking advantage of California’s daughters and getting away with it because–there’s no parental notification in CA. Look at that. My favorite is the very beginning where in small print at the bottom of the ad it reads: “Dramatizaton Based on Actual Facts.” REALLY?! Show me the facts. I want to see where it says that older men in California are more likely to have sex with/take advantage of younger girls because they know that the girl’s parents won’t find out if they take her to get an abortion after.

…and so does this advertisement Laura Frankel responded to at Culture Wars: The Abortion Edition. It’s an advertisement from the folks that support Measure 11 in South Dakota.

It ties into something I wrote about briefly in a previous post about how many South Dakotaeans view the mass importing of pro-choice advocates to their state to be emblematic of the East Coast elite “abortion industry” who, according to this ad, make billions on abortions every year. That industry consists of non-profit groups like NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and the ACLU. They have what looks to be a dying message from Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who is given the title of “Last Surviving Member of NARAL” (as though that awful pro-choice disease wiped out the rest, but, he survived, because he changed his mind…they don’t say that, I’m just reading a wee bit into it) claiming NARAL’s goal was to, “export our pro-abortion mentality across the land”. Kind of like those crazy Eastern pro-abortion advocates now trying to spred their pro-abortion policies in South Dakota. He goes onto say that one of their strategies was, “to deny what we knew to be true, that an abortion kills an existing human being”. Watch for yourself, he’s clearly reading cue cards to the side of the camera, but this a good ad! Creating native suspicion of anyone who comes from the “pro-abortion industry” to the state is brilliant. It goes beyond simple religious politics and taps the core of suspicion and fear: it’s us versus them. I don’t like their message, but they are using media and fear politics to their advantage in a major way!