Men: is your hair clean enough to get you laid? While you've been working out to get ripped abs, has your unstyled, sweat-soaked hair been holding you back from sexing the women of your dreams? No, obviously not. Your lack of money has been holding you back. But Axe, maker of horrifying adolescent body spray and even more horrifying publicity stunts, is going to convince you otherwise! Because that's what Axe does: steadily erode any semblance of dignity the American male may possess. In the grand emasculating tradition of fancy men's underwear, get ready for Axe male hair care products—the new thing that you must have in order to get chicks, bro!

"We found that 85% of guys think their hair is pretty good, but more than half of women don't agree," says David Rubin, director of Unilever hair care. Axe's new line "meets guys' needs and provides a service to women," he says.

That service: turning your man into a preening douchebag. The real deal here is that male hair care is one of the last remaining unexploited categories in the grooming and personal care products sector, and Axe—owned by humongo company Unilever—is trying to create new demand. Consider very carefully the implications of this line from a research report:

"Satisfaction and complacency are barriers to sales growth in men's shampoos and conditioners."

Yes, the problem here is that men are satisfied. In order to solve this problem, the marketing machine will make men unsatisfied. Then they will buy shitty Axe products and act even more self-obsessed. This is the problem with marketing, in a nutshell. [WSJ; pic via]