Axe's Earth Day: Shower together!

A new ad suggests you save water by "showerpooling" -- but you'll smell worse

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Senior Writer

Published April 22, 2010 9:22PM (EDT)

Axe "showerpooling" commercial
Axe "showerpooling" commercial

Happy Earth Day! The nice gentlemen at Axe have a suggestion for saving our planet's most precious resource: water. Just turn your hygiene habits into a group activity and "showerpool." Get it? See, it's funny because it's about getting "friendly" with naked girls, under the guise of conservation. The Canadian Axe ad drives home the point by illustrating it with cute icons of one male showerpooling with several curvy females, "all over zee planet." (Axe's ambitious suggested ratio: four ladies per Axe man.)

The "shower with a friend" joke is probably older than you are and it's a harmless riff on Axe's typical enthusiasm for ladies by the dozen.  But Axe, we hate to tell you how impractical this idea is. First, men always want the water colder than their female shower buddies, which is no incentive. And second, if you think you're going to get a bevy of dames to lather up with your super stinky grooming products, even for the good of the earth, we can only offer an au contraire.


By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a senior writer for Salon and author of "A Series of Catastrophes & Miracles." Follow her on Bluesky @maryelizabethw.

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