Summer’s Eve has a new ad campaign out, and it’s epic. Sensational. It’s the 300 of feminine-hygiene product TV commercials. No more walks on the beach. Screw some flowy, white linen trousers. You are strong. You are powerful. You are the most powerful thing on earth, actually.
… What’s that? Oh, wait, sorry, no, that’s just your hoo-ha. Sorry about that.
(Transcript after the jump)
DRAMATIC FEMALE VOICEOVER. It’s the cradle of life. It’s the center of civilization. Over the ages, and throughout the world, men have fought for it. Battled for it. Even died for it. One might say it’s the most powerful thing on earth.
WOMAN LOOKING AT COOTER-CLEANER. Hmm.
PEPPY, CHEERFUL FEMALE VOICEOVER. So come on, ladies. Show it a little love. Cleansing wash and cloths from Summer’s Eve. Hail to the V.
No more frolicking freshly through fields of flowers, ladies. You’re too busy hiding behind a stand of bamboo while two men battle valiantly for access to your vajajay.
Says Summer’s Eve Director of U.S. Marketing Angela Bryant,
“The whole category has been talking to women the same way since feminine hygiene products have been in the marketplace, and ironically, many media outlets won’t even allow the use of the word vagina in advertising. … This campaign is about empowerment, changing the way women may think of the brand, and removing longstanding stigmas: Summer’s Eve is not a means to confidence, rather it’s a celebration of confidence, of being a woman, and taking care of their bodies.”
Because nothing is more empowering than reducing a woman to nothing but her vadge.
And the funny thing is, my vagina is not very powerful. She’s kind of soft, sensitive, and weepy, frankly. She’s never accomplished anything that I haven’t been there to help her with. And the last time I let her make a major decision for me, things did not end well.
Bryant says they’re changing the way the feminine-hygiene segment talks to women: Instead of seeing your cooch as something so foul and disgusting that it needs to be cleansed with a special product, you’re seeing your cooch as a precious and amazing prize that needs to be cleansed with a special product so it doesn’t return to its foul, disgusting nature. Our celebration of womanhood involves a product specifically designed to keep our bathing-suit area smelling like a field of lavender or a freshly made bed or anything other than a woman’s genitalia. And that celebration of womanhood ignores the woman completely, casting her O’Keefe not just in the starring role but as a solo act, wherein it starts wars and induces jousts and apparently reenacts that one scene from The Lion King completely unaided. (Although when you put it that way, it really does seem pretty impressive.)
AdRants calls the campaign–which includes print ads and a really discomfiting video featuring a talking cat in a tux–a “refreshingly twisted approach to the category and, in our opinion, a welcome one.” (I’m right with them on “twisted approach.”) The fact that is doesn’t include the words “not-so-fresh feeling” is sufficient to impress them. The fact that it doesn’t include the word “woman”–ever, anywhere, at any point–is sufficient to cheese me off, and I have to wonder if it’s what the women on Summer’s Eve’s “listening tour” had in mind.
It’s a question that one might pose to Bryant at, for instance, summerseve_cares [at] cbfleet [dot] com. Try to be respectful. If you’re not up to it, maybe let your hoohoodilly take care of it for you; I understand it’s eloquent and diplomatic and types at 90 words per minute.
It’s the cradle of life, people. It’s the center of civilization. Your ladyregion is… Mesopotamia.
(h/t Jezebel)