Personally, I’m glad products can be used to shave the balls.  It sure beats the old electric razor my dad gave me when I was 15.  Without any pressure from anyone (this was also mostly pre-internet too), I’ve always hated the hair down there.

So while companies will try to sell us anything for anything, there are some of us who are really the original customers :)

Obviously the advertisers are working to sell their product because there is a market for it. However, in the first Phillips ad they show shaving as an option (you can shave wherever YOU want to, with one kiwi hairless), while in the video, it is really stressed that it will make you a better man to shave, and the only “benefit” they give is: “When there’s no underbrush, the tree looks taller.” So the only benefit is to make your penis look bigger?

I agree and I think especially within feminist circles this idea is certainly there, because a lot of women/men shave for completely personal reasons (be it pleasure or aesthetics, or any other reason).

I guess the real issue is that being hairless is generally acceptable and attractive and having hair is just not. I think what really needs to be pushed is that it’s awesome if you shave, it’s awesome if you don’t, and it should be a completely personal decision.

Ain’t necessarily so. If you’re a man who goes to the gym, you’re going to see naked man parts in the locker room. And from my observation, shaving & trimming of male nether regions is way, way up in recent years. Even in the small town where I work, no one seems to think this is particularly noteworthy (although there’s obviously going to be a reluctance to talk about it).

Yes, but the issue here is that such ads contribute to the formation and development of those norms. No one’s arguing that this ad is creating a desire ex nihilo, but it does perform an important function in transmitting and shaping social expectations. For example, this shaving trend seems to have been influenced in part by pornography, but in formulating this practice as something able to be discussed in the wider public sphere — and necessitating the development of a product which will be for sale in ‘mainstream’ stores — Philips is participating in that process of social change.

It seems like a lot of the time on this blog you take it as given that advertising is pushing people to do something they don’t want to. While many times this is the case, sometimes they are just giving people what they want.

This viewpoint seems to consistently give me the impression that you might view people who actually want said products as naive. Is it so hard to believe some people WANT to shave their balls?

Also remember, being social creatures, there is nothing more natural for a human to do than to conform to the social norm.