These terrible new Veet ads shame women into removing their body hair

These terrible new Veet ads shame women into removing their body hair

Hey, ladies: Your leg stubble will turn you into a man! Or at least deem you unattractive, unfeminine, and undesirable.

That's the message behind Veet's new ad campaign, which warns women not to "risk dudeness" and encourages them to remove their body hair with its wax strips. In one of the spots, a man is horrified when he wakes up and touches the stubbly leg of his one-night-stand. "Yeah, I know, I'm a little prickly... I shaved yesterday!" pleads the woman, who promptly turns into a hairy man — because body hair is apparently only for dudes.

The message here is clear: A woman is supposed to remove every trace of her naturally-occurring body hair, lest she get judged by nearly everyone. That's why Veet is here! And forget about ever hailing a cab while sporting armpit stubble — that's absolutely disgusting and ain't gonna happen, according to Veet.

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The campaign is surprisingly tone-deaf, of course, but it is perhaps even more shocking that numerous reps from Veet and an entire ad agency thought that this "Don't risk dudeness" campaign was the best approach. Watch two of the spots below and see for yourself. --Samantha Rollins

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Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.