I was already starting to get a little tired of having vanity products targetted at me all the time when I watched TV - seems you just can’t sit down and watch a little bit of sci-fi shlock without having to endure male sports stars and B-list celebrities gurning at you from the screen while they either whisk a razor across their chin at frightening speed, or smear some overpriced goop into their chiseled mugs. I thought I’d reached the pinnacle when the ads tried to convince me that I couldn’t possibly be ready for a life in the morning unless I followed their ‘essential’ 3-step programme of ‘prepare, shave and moisturise’, when in practice I’ve survived happily for ages without doing any one of these 3 things. And I find it hard to contain a belly laugh when they try to combine the use of these products with machismo, such as interspersing some guy doing a frankly impractical level of preening with voice-overs explaining that it’s because he had a “lad’s night out”, and getting a “fit bird” (since we’re being all gruff and manly here) to walk around in a towel in the background. All it needed to complete it was a bit of chest-bumping, talking about sports and a flashing red arrow saying “Not Gay”. 😀
But no, it get’s worse. Now, not only are the grooming companies aggressively targetting men with their generally useless products, but now they’re targetting a specific subset of men - gamers. Yes, there’s now another variant of that ridiculous Gillette brand family called “Fusion Gamer”, the existence of which I was alerted to via Penny Arcade but thought it was a joke, an extrapolation. But no, it really exists.
I’m not really sure where they’re going with this. At the risk of stereotyping here, I have to ask whether, as a rule, most male gamers care a huge amount about personal grooming; speaking as one myself, whilst I’m aware of the need for general tidiness (depending on context), I generally seek out the path of least resistance over any kind of structured vanity programme any day of the week. This is one of the advantages of beards of course - as well as giving you something to tug on when you’re thinking, they turn a daily shaving routine into a much more relaxed, convenient affair. 😀
Maybe it’s just that I missed out on the whole Metrosexual trend. Maybe I just have barely repressed hobo tendencies, or I’m just incredibly lazy, but these ads make me laugh, not want to buy anything. I guess someone must be watching them and thinking ‘mmm, yeah I really should moisturise more’. But, I do not for one second understand these people.