Happiness, freedom and super powers.
These are just some of the promises that the adverts on Wilkinson Sword Women’s Facebook page – and its wider advertising campaign -make and seemingly each of these can be achieved by simply shaving our legs.
According to step two above shaved legs equal happy legs and the curious charade that advertisements for hair removal products stage crystallises when already hairless legs are ‘shaved’ by the advertised product. My initial curiosity, however, was piqued when I saw the advert below on ‘Spontaneity’ and ‘Hair down there’ because it mirrors a peculiar editing trend which I have noticed in a series of recent cinema releases (for example, Stoker as Mia Wasikowska masturbates in the shower and The Duke of Burgundy as Peter Strickland’s camera zooms in between Sidse Babett Knudsen’s legs) where a gulf is essentially constructed in the space where pubic hair should be (seen).
Although very much a work in progress, it is my hypothesis here that the promise of pubic hair onscreen prompts a break down in the very body of visual media – it is not simply offscreen but entirely voided. Indeed the films/advertisements simply cannot cope with its presence and accordingly act out. The full advertisement can viewed here: http://www.tellyads.com/play_advert/?filename=TA18143&type=recent
Body Hair on Film 