After decades of women being told to hide their natural body hair, it's is finally becoming normalized. In addition to both celebrities and women across the country embracing their leg and armpit hair, this movement has, ironically enough, been pushed to the forefront by an indie razor brand, Billie.
A year ago today the brand released its historic Project Body Hair video, the first-ever razor ad to show female body hair. “We very much wanted to not only acknowledge that body hair exists, and to show it," Billie cofounder Georgina Gooley tells Glamour. "But we also wanted to move the conversation around the message that razor brands have been sharing with women—and that shaving is a choice, not an expectation,”
Despite the progress made in our culture and advertising, there's still one type of hair that's seen as taboo: pubic hair. While the tides are changing (see Janelle Monáe's "Pynk" video and Ashley Graham's group text), Billie wants to normalize pubic hair further with its newest campaign, Red, White, and You Do You, just in time for the Fourth of July. The video showcases models' pubic hair in various states, from a clean shave to a full bush. To the brand’s knowledge, it is the first-ever razor ad featuring female pubic hair. The campaign was inspired by the spirit of Project Body Hair, with a summer-focused twist.
“If we’re not acknowledging body hair exists, it’s a form of body shaming,” says Gooley, adding that grooming is yet another way women are expected to be “beach ready.” She hopes to alleviate some of this pressure so women can just enjoy summer in their own skin. “There has been this shame around body hair, and a lot of that is the shaving category talking about the topic as a problem that needs to be fixed with the product they're trying to sell. We didn’t want to be part of that conversation.”
The film’s director and photographer, Ashley Armitage, who also directed Project Body Hair, echoes these feelings. "In our film we wanted to normalize pubic hair because it’s exactly that—normal,” she says. “Body hair grows on people of all genders, and it doesn’t suddenly become 'gross' or 'unhygienic' when it is on a woman, trans woman, or nonbinary individual. We wanted to show that body hair is a choice; shave it, wax it, grow it, or do a bit of both. All are valid."
The video could have been gimmicky or even campy, but because it's done in such a female-focused way, it just feels honest. And it may seem strange that a razor brand doesn't show a single razor in the ad, but that’s the point.
“I think for us it’s always been about putting our audience ahead of our product,” says Gooley. “With Project Body Hair we showed women with body hair and without body hair. We actually had the razor in that one, because we were making this statement and calling out the shaving category. But we were also saying that’s a choice, and with this new video, it's more of a celebration of that choice.”
Clearly, the strategy is working. Gooley says that after last year’s video, the brand received floods of support on social media. Most notably, the brand completely sold out of razors in the week following the video. This solidifies what the brand already knew: Women are craving authentic representation in advertising. One of these women is Lindsay Zae, a model in the campaign. She says while she currently feels most empowered when she has body hair, when she was younger, she experienced internalized negativity about it. “Seeing a candid film from a razor brand about the beauty of body hair would've really liberated a 12-year-old me—the message excited me, and I wanted to be a part of it."
Bella Cacciatore is the beauty associate at Glamour. Follow her on Instagram @bellacacciatore_.
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