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Old Spice ad: centaur shills body wash

Old Spice ad: centaur shills body wash published on No Comments on Old Spice ad: centaur shills body wash

Yay! I love centaurs. They are one of my favorite therianthropic creatures. Here’s one shilling for Old Spice Double Impact body wash. Watch the commercial on YouTube, and see a screencap below.


Since I first watched this ad with no sound, I was initially struck by the screamingly obvious fakeness of the centaur construction. Clearly the centaur is composited from a male model with bedhead and a well-trained horse standing verrrrrrrry still. Thus we get the strange effect of watching the human half flex and twist as he washes, but his movements have no effect on his equine half, to which he is supposed to be attached by bone, muscle, nerves, tissue and all the other elements in a mammalian body. This centaur is so unrealistic as to be disconcerting. I speak for therianthropophiles everywhere when I say that WE ARE DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, OLD SPICE.

After I watched the ad, I understood the simplistic and stupid link that Old Spice makes using the centaur imagery. The centaur calls himself "two things at once." The first time, he says he’s "a man AND a smart shopper." The second time, he says that he’s "a man AND a provider." The viewer thus easily links the "man" with the human part of the centaur and the "smart shopper," along with the "provider," with the equine part by process of elimination. Drawing in the ridiculous stereotype of a particularly potent man being "hung like a horse," the ad implies that users of Old Spice body wash are not only "smart shoppers" and good "providers," but also that they are heterosexual [notice the woman as prop, signifying the centaur’s heteronormative orientation] dynamos in the sack [stall?] with really big penises! Stoooooopid.

The implication that Old Spice Double Impact users are hung like horses is amusingly undercut by the fact that the equine part of the centaur appears to be played by a female horse. HAH!

P.S. While the construction of the centaur puts him slightly taller than the woman, the centaur’s height is appropriate for a male human, not a male centaur. Centaurs are commonly portrayed as hybrids between regular-size horses and humans; thus, they are taller than humans. The centaur in this commercial looks more like a pony/human hybrid than a horse/human hybrid. Since most ponies are on a smaller anatomical scale, including balls, than horses, the centaur’s scale also undercuts the "Old Spice users have really big balls" message.
 

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