Axe releases body spray for women, ends the battle of the sexes once and for all

For the past decade, the makers of Axe body spray have convinced millions of American men that good-looking women will find them desirable if they smell like a combination of Pine-Sol and Spaghetti-Os. Now, women can also capture the scent of the fear of dying alone, with new Axe Anarchy, a body spray by Unilever that is targeted at both men and women.

According to the New York Times, the company created the fragrance in response to demand from female consumers, who senior brand manager Barret Roberts says have been clamoring for their "very own scent of Axe." The women's body spray is available for limited release only, and Axe execs are waiting to see the sales figures before they decide to put it permanently on the market.

Although Axe ads have been criticized by women's groups for sexist, demeaning, or just plain stupid content , creative director at advertising firm Bartle Bogle Hegarty David Kolbusz says that the new ad campaign for the women's spray is about "subverting expectations of what an Axe commercial is." "Before, an Axe commercial was all about a guy spraying himself and a girl being attracted, and Axe giving him an edge in the mating game," Kolbusz says. "Whereas now women also have something to spray on themselves, and consequently there's more of an equilibrium between the sexes."

While the first commercial for the women's spray won't be released on Axe's Facebook page until tomorrow, a teaser commercial (above) was released Jan. 1, and you'll have to determine for yourself whether it contributes to an "equilibrium between the sexes." Yet like women's rights pioneers Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Elizabeth Stamantina "Tina" Fey before them, Axe has almost certainly leveled the playing field between the sexes in at least one sense: sure, there's still a disparity between the annual earnings of men and women in the United States, but at least now men and women in the workplace can smell equally shitty.