Ben Shapiro attacks Maybelline for advertisement featuring bearded influencer
Published
Citation From the July 14, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Okay. So, Maybelline has decided that they -- they want to literally hold Bud Light's beer, apparently. So, Maybelline is a women's -- so, here's the thing. A lot of the male brands are not doing this anymore because males were like, no. Men ain't ladies, ladies ain't men. We ain't doing this. But there are a lot of companies that are still relying on women to be nice because women are typically nicer than men -- not to other women. But to, like, everyone else, they're very, very nice, particularly to men. And so, because of that, there are a lot of brands, they're relying on these sort of -- niceness of women to just insult women up the wazoo. It's why the idea of -- of men playing in women's sports is more offensive to men than to women because a lot of women, even though they should be defending themselves, they're really like, well, you know, but isn't it mean? So, now Maybelline is taking that to the ultimate extreme. They've signed up a Maybelline partner who is a bearded hairy dude to model, which is hideous and horrifying, obviously.
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So, for those who can't see, this would be a dude named Ryan Vita. He has a full beard. He has a beaded barrette in his beard while applying bright pink shades of Maybelline's super stay liquid lipstick. And then he kisses his hand showing no gloss has transferred onto his hand. So, Maybelline shared the ad with his nearly 12 million Instagram followers. The caption denotes that Vita, who has 49,000 followers -- so very few followers, by the way -- and uses the pronouns she/he/they, which doesn't even make any sense. Like, how get -- she/he/they -- that's all of them. Is a Maybelline partner, and nearly 2,000 comments show many consumers aren't pleased with the casting. Well, you would think.
At a certain point, are women just gonna stand up to this, and be like, no. How about this? How about you advertise female products to us with women? How about that? How about we would like to see what a woman might look like with the lipstick, as opposed to a bearded, not particularly attractive dude. How about that? But no, Maybelline is going to lecture everybody and they're gonna steer directly into this. You know, there's gotta be a makeup brand somewhere that actually wants to cater to women.
And women, at some point, you're gonna have to stand up for yourselves. I mean, seriously. Being the powerful, strong people that you are, at some point, you're gonna have to say dudes should stop pretending to be us because we are not dudes. But if you won't, then you're just gonna keep getting catered to with this kind of crap. I'm just wondering who Maybelline thinks is, like, the crowd that's like, oh, man, now I'm buying more Maybelline because I saw a bearded ugly dude put on some liquid lipstick. That makes perfect sense. Who are the brand managers of these places?