Billie has rewritten everything we’ve come to know from razor brands and campaigns. Its models have hair ― real hair ― all over their bodies. And now, on their faces, too.
Just ahead of Movember, the popular health initiative that encourages men to let their mustaches grow all month for charity, Billie has released a campaign encouraging women to do the same.
“We’re on a mission to normalize body hair for all women,” Billie co-founder Georgina Gooley told HuffPost via email. “Mustaches felt like the perfect next body part because, despite the fact that we all have them, no one talks about them, let alone celebrates them.”
The Billie team chose Movember to release this campaign as a way to push its “do what you want with your own body hair” agenda forward while simultaneously spreading awareness for a good cause. But more than that, the brand continues to normalize something that is, well, normal. Previously, the brand released ad campaigns featuring grown-out pubic and armpit hair, encouraging women to shave — only if they want to! What a novel concept.
“We’re hoping to de-stigmatize upper lip hair and empower women to feel confident with having hair there,” Gooley said. “We’d love it if having a mustache was just as normal for women as it is for men.”
The brand sourced its models on Instagram by doing casting calls and reaching out to women “confidently sporting mustaches in their photos.” On the day of the shoot, the models bonded over continued stigma against their upper lip hair.
“There was a lot of laughing and commiserating about past pressures to hide their ’staches from the world,” Gooley said.
The campaign launched Tuesday, along with a promise to match 100% of contributions to its Team Billie Movember campaign from people of all genders up to $50,000.
It would be nice to see all major razor companies celebrating the fact that women have hair, but we’ll take this step forward as more than just lip service.
