Billie wants to be the cool girl’s answer to Dollar Shave Club. Click below to see what this new body brand is built on.
"Why isn’t there a Dollar Shave Club for women?"
Billie cofounder Georgina Gooley was still working at Wieden & Kennedy when she first realized her shaving routine made her bristle. “We saw startups in the grooming space bringing better pricing to men’s shaving products,†she says. “But there wasn’t the same innovation for women.†It was an opportunity to counter the “pink taxâ€, a long-standing phenomenon where women are charged 10-15% more than men for equivalent goods and services like haircuts and razors. “The idea that women should have to pay more for a product is offensive and totally absurd.
The pink tax affects feminine hygiene products, haircuts, toys, clothing, and even dry cleaning. Multiple cities in the United States have passed laws to combat it, including Nevada, which recently made tampons and sanitary napkins exempt from sales and use tax for the next 10 years.
Gooley writes, “A hundred years ago Billie or Billy was predominantly a man’s name. We loved the idea of a name morphing from ‘boy to girl’; it’s a good metaphor of what we hope to do in the male-dominated shaving category.â€
"We wanted to make body hair less taboo, and reinforce that shaving is a choice."
Razor brands have wanted women to think that the best version of themselves is hairless,†Gooley says, referencing a century-long phenomenon where shaving ads never showed any actual body hair. “The beauty industry has typically celebrated hairless, glossy, airbrushed women. Being comfortable with your body isn’t easy when every strand of body hair and blemish is blurred out of advertising. We wanted to make body hair less taboo, and reinforce that shaving is a choice.
"We’re not going to tell you how to shave."
Billie’s Project Body Hair had one goal: make the Internet a little fuzzier. It launched with a video featuring a punch, punky Princess Nokia song and encouraged women to share pics of their body hair on social media and tag them #ProjectBodyHair. Billie donated their professional photos from the project to Unsplash so people could use them for free and the movement garnered media attention in over 30 countries.
