The PROBLEM with Manscaped

so if you've been a man on the internet in the last five years it's basically impossible for you not to know about manscaped manscaped has only been around since 2016 but with hyper-focused man marketing they have become probably the world's most famous ball trimmer or lawnmower as they like to call it so have they done something special for the male hygiene world or are they all pun and no punch that was a boxing reference landscaped if you don't already know is a male grooming brand with a very specific marketing tactic they have made themselves the man brand to a comedic degree their products are all named after various landscaping tools and the aesthetic is decidedly simple and sort of rugged with like the all black and gold thing the company was actually founded by Paul Tran in 2016 but our man Paul was not the first one to the men grooming Department party I'm sure many of you watching this remember the legendary Old Spice commercials of yesteryears where Old Spice might have pioneered this type of marketing in this industry manscaped is now carrying the torch but I think we really have to zoom out a little bit to get an understanding of how weird this is for men to care about how they look girls for a really long time the insane majority of personal care personal hygiene Cosmetics has been laser focused on women which has created something that is known as The Grooming Gap this is the basic Trope that you know women have insanely high standards and expectations placed upon them and so they have a lot of things that they need to do to maintain said appearances whereas guys are using 12 in one body wash for literally everything this is a true story I lived with a guy once who would use the dish soap from the kitchen in the shower it was an eye-opening day for me when I figured that out he just came out of the bathroom one day in a towel holding a bottle of Dawn and I was like that's why we go through so much dish so Yari was a weird guy for a long time if you ask most men myself included about their self-care or personal hygiene routine it would be probably a very short conversation I personally don't use any kind of moisturizer I don't wash my face regularly and I use basically whatever soap is in the shower you just have to watch any episode of queer eye and you'll piece together that men in North America at least are not taught much about how to take care of themselves which is why most of them don't have a skincare routine now if you're not in your head in agreement here I gotta give you a bit of a warning because things they are changing manscaped is just one of many brands that are leaning into the male hygiene movement because the problem with men Using Dawn dish detergent to shower isn't that the product is wrong for the scenario it's being used it's because it's bad for the economy now before we dive into what's happening with men's personal care products we have to acknowledge that this has been going on for women for decades and that is what laid the groundwork for what is happening today it's so common it actually has a colloquial term which is the pink tax back in the 1990s a study in California revealed that 64 of dry cleaners in major cities charge more to dry clean a woman's blouse then a man's button-up shirt this was the first time that the pink tax was properly documented and then brought to the attention of the public a classic example of this is how pink razors cost more than black razors from the exact same brand even though the only difference is literally their color in 2015 the New York Department of Consumer Affairs found that women's products cost 42 percent more most of the time now the pink tax isn't a real tax thing as much as it is just a really shitty thing that these industries do to women and now they've figured out how to do the same thing to men to make more money as usual now how they have done this is probably going to be pretty predictable in the last few years the marketing towards men about personal care products has gone way through the roof and the resulting increase in price is what we are calling the gunmetal grade tax I am uh just a little bit proud of that one now of course we've seen gendered Marketing in other Industries before like giant ass trucks that need to be driven by real men or cookware for the stay-at-home mom but now we've got [ __ ] like dude wipes which are wet wipes for dudes are they any different from regular wet wipes or baby wipes for that matter uh I don't know but there is one undeniable difference between these products and that is price one pack of 30 dude wipes will cost you ten dollars or you could get eight packs of Cottonelle wipes which have 48 wipes per pack for 15 now we're not saying that these two products are exactly the same or that Cottonelle is a brand that we would recommend you buy but we're pointing out the fact that the one specifically targeted towards dudes is way more expensive also side note if you're using wet wipes just stop it they're terrible for a Municipal Water Systems they create these huge clogs and stuff and then your taxpayer money has to get them removed eventually and that goes for the ones that even say flushable on them too I feel like such a dad right now I'm a dude Dad I'm daddying all the dudes right now because our audience demographic is like 90 men what's better than this guys being dudes but of course it's not just the dude wipes we've seen ax deodorant promoting these kind of man ads for years to try and catch up with old spice new brands are entering the scene like Dr Squatch which is like bar soap for men the promises that you can shower like a Spartan and of course you can't forget the soap gripper too because you know don't want to drop the soap in the shower boys no it's a real thing you can buy like it's it's like a it's like a silicone pad to help you hold the soap I guess I guess so you don't or maybe it's like an exfoliant or something I don't know it's very strange dropping Subs is part of the fun you know there are also brands that produce the exact same product and Market them differently for men the way they present these products is very predictable right you have manly words like fighting dry skin and you know pictures of men scaling mountains and stuff and they're always inventing new ways of applying conventional products to set them apart like spray-on body lotion or ball wash which as you may have predicted is body wash but for your balls now it does feel kind of like a joke right and in some ways these companies are poking fun at themselves to make it feel a little less awkward to talk about cleaning up your ass and balls you know and we're gonna be talking about that tactic as well later but the truth is this type of marketing really works as we said this company is less than a decade old but it has seen humongous success with backers like Channing Tatum and celebrity spokespeople like Pete Davidson but when I pitched this idea to our writing team they had no idea what I was talking about because none of our writers are dudes in fact Caroline who wrote this script with me had never even seen a manscape ad before and so to get a quick overview of what was going on she conducted a bit of an experiment on chat GPT and for the purposes of this video we have named that chatbot Chad Chad GPT if you will I think it's funny Chad said that the main reason manscape's lawnmower became the most talked about ball trimmer on the Internet is because they disrupted the industry in an industry that had previously been very focused on women's products they had the balls to only target men they Niche down even further specifically focused below the belt there of course were ton of other electric shavers out on the market today that look just like manscaped but they were marketed for facial and body use can these products do double duty could you use something you shave your face with to shave your your back door of course but those Brands didn't have the cones to Market themselves that way Chad also had a number of other points of wise manscape was so popular so here we go number one Sleek packaging and brand identity two they use humor in their marketing three they built a massive social media online following with that humorous marketing four they're constantly innovating their products and five they have very positive word of mouth marketing largely due to their strategic Partnerships we did a little bit more digging into those claims that Chad made and it turns out that for the most part he's telling the truth which means that there Airline robots are coming for your job so manscape's branding is this whole black and gold thing yeah it is sort of like an homage to the overly minimalist roots of male hygiene manscape's humorous presentation of their brand is incredibly important every sports team or high school class in the history of the world has had a thesaurus of names that they have for their Bojangles and by reflecting that kind of juvenile humor they are able to connect with men on a traditionally sensitive subject imagine if the lawnmower 4.0 was named instead like the pubic hair and and anus area trimmer 200 you know it's like a little two on the nose this relatable language has earned them five times as many Instagram followers as I have which is a lot of followers for a ball hair trimmer now Chad said that they're constantly innovating their products which I mean technically I could say that's true they've released four iterations of their ball trimmer since 2016 and branched out into other products as well but that could just as easily be about making more money off of the new releases than actually improving anything now our scriptwriter would like to point out once again that she does not have a pair of balls so she cannot speak to the quality of the product and I haven't tried it either but apparently she has watched several YouTube video reviews and it does seem like the guys using it do enjoy it there is also this great thing that happens when our writers do research for these kinds of videos is that they're targeted ads are totally messed up for like months afterwards so Caroline enjoy those ball trimmer ads so what I believe you were trying to say is thank you thank you you're welcome no no but now we're going to get into some critical thinking stuff first we want to point out that while there are a lot of people online who seem to like the manscape trimmer there are a ton of other people to say that you could probably save some money and just buy a generic body hair trimmer that gets the job done for a smaller price tag again this is the gunmetal grade tax at work products that are marketed specifically to a particular gender that are sold at a higher price because they're not just buying the item right you're buying the idealized person and life that that product symbolizes to make you feel better about yourself and of course we have to talk about the strategy behind all this manly marketing the product names the lack of color the guys who are promoting it it is all just so straight this hyper masculine presentation of manscaped and these other products marketed specifically towards men seems to say that these products are what you need in order order to become a man this is what masculinity is supposed to look like now for me I can look at this whole man prayed and recognize the mean here right like it's a joke in a lot of cases and don't get me wrong I love a good dick joke but the thing about this is that a lot of people take this stuff really seriously and this kind of marketing can make some people feel really shitty about themselves if they don't feel like they fit into the stereotype that's being portrayed you might notice that manscaped isn't um sponsoring RuPaul's Drag Race For example it is also no coincidence that this hyper-manly marketing is appearing in The Grooming product aisle a place that has been traditionally exclusively targeting women is a part of this marketing plan to steer men away from feeling too feminine for using grooming products you know the joke has always been the guys basically just grab a bar of soap and scrub themselves down once a week and they're good and now we have this humongous product aisle for men to take care of themselves and so we've had to up the man Holiness to make it okay for men to care about how they look but here's where this goes to a whole other level right because it's not just about being a man but being a man who is prepared for sex the ball deodorants the lawnmower with its trim the Hedge to make the tree look bigger innuendos I mean manscape's Instagram account is basically just a whole bunch of jokes about how your package needs to be ready for your lady friend to enjoy now yes it is courteous to come to a metaphorical potluck with a beautifully prepared dish but basically Brands and manscaped in particular are preying on your need to feel manly and your anxiety around having sex in order to make more money but don't get me wrong I I think that it is actually good that we are in a modern time where it is normal for men to take care of themselves and to take pride in their grooming habits because it has been proven to boost self-confidence but of course this comes with a shift you know where off opportunistic brands are going to purposely take advantage of their customers feelings and insecurities to sell them a product you just have to be aware of these things now if you are interested in a shaver that has nothing to do with your manliness I have been using Leaf shave razors for years now they are completely waste free they are incredibly well built and the best part is that they use safety razor blades and these things you can pick up on Amazon for basically pennies so the cost to refill them once you get the handle is essentially nothing we have a link down in the description it is affiliate links so if you buy something through that link you put some money back into this channel to support what we're doing and you get yourself an absolutely Nifty very useful functional razor but thank you so much for watching if you did enjoy this video make sure you like it you know subscribe if you want to see more and if you do we'll see you next week [Music] really

Channel: Future Proof

Views: 307,805

Keywords: manscaped, ball trimmer, male hygiene, male, men, soap, lawnmower, bulldog, bulldog for men, bulldog skincare, manscaped trimmer, dr squatch, dr squatch soap, male soap, male trimmer, ball deodorant, deodorant, spray on deodorant, male deodorant, future proof, educational, education, explainer, manscaped review, review, trimmer review, product review, sustainability, sustainable, hygiene kit, lawn mower 3.0

Id: BEmfRKNeSP8

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2023