Gillette’s new Body Razor: a green Venus for the guys?
Gillette is moving into the below-the-neck manscape landscape in a big way with its new Body Razor, which it is touting as “the first razor built for the terrain of a man’s body.”
This news came to our attention in the form of a package, delivered to our office, that included a smooth-chested, swim-trunks-wearing Ken doll to which one of these new Body Razors has been securely twister-tied.
Once we got past the bizarre presentation to focus on the razor itself, it seemed vaguely familiar -- as if we’d seen the distinctive handle shape and rounded three-blade head somewhere before.
After about 10 minutes it dawned on us that we see one of these creatures -- in pink -- in the shower from time to time when our better half has left it behind. It’s essentially Gillette’s Venus women’s razor in a manned-up black-and-green color scheme.
In a way, it makes sense. Based on some of the facts and figures from Gillette that accompanied the razor-wired Ken, when asked what tools men have previously used to shave their body parts, 20% responded “girlfriend’s razor.”(Roomies beware: 7% answered “roommate’s face razor.”) Another interesting response? That 79% of men said they use separate razors for shaving face and areas “below the neck” (and 77% of those men said they felt using separate razors was “cleaner/more hygienic”).
Which brings us to what we think is the actually the best feature of all -- the three-blade, three-lubricating strip, forward-pivoting, rounded-edge heads on the non-disposable version of the razor are interchangeable with Gillette’s Mach3 handle (as are the Venus blades), which means that whatever shaving tool a guy cares to wrap his grip around on a regular basis, the chances of confusing your face blade with its below-the-neck counterpart just got a whole lot slimmer.
The Gillette Body Razor, scheduled to hit retail Feb. 14, has a starting MSRP of $7.97, and is available in disposable and system versions with two-pack and four-pack replacement heads.
[For the Record, 9:53 a.m. PST Jan. 28: An earlier version of this post stated that 70% of respondents in a Gillette survey said they’ve previously used a girlfriend’s razor to shave their body parts. The figure is 20%.]
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