Tool, indeed.

I keep seeing commercials for this ridiculous object:

It's a shower pouf. Or a mesh sponge. Axe calls it a "Detailer Shower Tool," because putting it into the vocabulary of cars and machinery and packaging it like a Craftsman tape measure makes it butch. It costs around three or four times what a mesh sponge costs.

[[On a small (potentially insignificant?) scale, this is an illustration of a concept I have encountered many times in feminist discourses. In order to gain power, subjugated groups sometimes strive to be like the (perhaps misguided) dominant group, e.g., women take to wearing clothing traditionally only worn by men (pants), or otherwise aspire to seem more like men (shoulder pads) in order to be seen as their equal. It is much less likely that a dominant group will strive to take on the characteristics of a subjugated group ([most] men don't aspire to dress like women). In other words, taking the simplistic example of attire, there has been a gradual equalizing over several decades of the types of clothing it is acceptable for men and women to wear. Both have shirts and pants and shorts. There are still men's and women's versions to account for bodily proportions and other social cues (like color and material), but the differences tend not to be of kind. However, this equality arises from the subjugated group (i.e. women) taking on characteristics of the dominant group (men), not the other way around. It was not a two-way street. Characteristics of the subjugated group, if possessed by members of the dominant group, seem out of place, inappropriate, and negative. (Men dressing as women, men being emotional, etc.)]]

So, even though a mesh sponge or sponge or loofah or shower pouf might sometimes be a convenient way to wash oneself in the shower, it's a gendered item. Women use shower poufs and loofahs. They are not butch. But Axe wants badly to market them to men. Bill O'Reilly (butch!) isn't even clear on what a loofah is, whether he should sexually harass women with it, or eat it in a Mediterranean restaurant. Ay, there's the rub. Axe has probably spent millions of dollars on ads that tell men that women will find them sexually attractive if they smell good (read: like Axe). Axe has been slowly pushing perfumed personal hygiene products on men--gently, so as not to scare them--for several years. The shower pouf seems a bit radical. Also, faggy? Butch guys do not want to seem faggy. They want to be sexually attractive to women, not other men! Axe has made it very clear that the scents contained in its products are engineered to be attractive to women. How do they solve this marketing predicament?

Fucking Detailer Shower Tool.