As the first women’s razor brand not born from a men’s company, Billie’s mission has always been to champion womankind in a category where women were previously shamed for having body hair and spoken to as “girlie girls”.

Billie has always represented a diverse group of women in branding, donated 1% of revenue to women’s causes around the world, and put women at the center of every business and product design decision. For years, the razor category depicted women as tall, blonde, white, cis “goddesses” with long flowing head hair—but absolutely no body hair. After years normalizing body hair, Billie wanted to go a step further and remove even more everyday pressures women face.

Our objective was to expose the bias associated with the word “woman,” to relieve all women from the incredibly limiting boxes, gender roles, and societal pressures that being a woman or looking like a woman entails.

Despite advancements for women through the decades, an archaic and narrow definition of what it means to be a woman has persisted. This has led to the perpetuation of unrealistic societal expectations and pressures as well as discriminatory biases.

This is evident in the many cultural movements that helped inform the film, including an election year where female candidacy, or lack thereof, was a hot-button topic; gender-nonconforming language was coming to the mainstream as “they” was chosen as the word of 2019; a burgeoning movement for racial equality was actively underway; trans rights were (and still are) under attack; and an international pandemic threw women out the workforce and back into traditional gender roles from the 1950s.

Through these movements it became clear that the definition of womankind should be far more nuanced and diverse than the mainstream portrayal, and the challenges different women face should be recognized in their layered and numerous idiosyncrasies.

Our “Think of A Woman” film invites you to dig into your unconscious perceptions by asking you to close your eyes and think of the “perfect woman.” After prompting you to open your eyes, the camera travels through an abstract unconscious, revealing a cast of underrepresented women who may not have immediately come to mind. The script uses visual misdirection and wordplay to flip one gender stereotype after another. With a final ending line “Let’s think about what we think about when we think of a woman”, the viewer is challenged to uncover biases instilled from years of societal programming (ones we all have).

Billie asked 300 Americans to list the gender roles and traits associated with the word “woman.” “Feminine”, “child-bearing”, “ household maintainer” and “having female sex organs” came up repeatedly. These were stereotypes we expected to see in 1950, not 2021.

We also interviewed 15 gender non-conforming people in 1:1 interviews who confirmed that society rewards women who fit into a hyper-feminine stereotypical mold. “The more feminine you are as a woman, the better you are received.” In addition, trans women vocalized their experience of being othered by society simply because they were not assigned female at birth.

Billie knew the best way to make space for more women was to inspire all of us to challenge what we’ve been programmed to believe. Once we become aware of these problematic stereotypes still lurking in our subconscious, we can begin to undo the damage, redefining “woman” as a more inclusive concept.

We launched the campaign on the year’s most commemorative day for women: March 8, International Women’s Day. While other female-empowerment brands were celebrating the women’s achievements, we went against the grain, challenging the word “woman” entirely.

If we were going to push for positive change, it had to come from behind the camera too. 100% of the brand and production company were women-identifying, 30% were part of the LGBTQIA+ community and 60% were people of color. This included many intersections inside of these identities like our talented director Quinn Wilson, a Black queer woman.

Casting real people was a conscious choice for authenticity: 50% of the cast was trans, and our voiceover talent was Indya Moore, an empowering trans and non binary actor.

The viral video launched on @billie organic social channels and was seeded with one other influencer(@beigecardigan).

It was created with under $280K.

Billie’s campaign took the world by force on International Women’s Day with media praise like “Think of a Woman fights back against every stereotype you’ve been conditioned to imagine” (Glamour), “A stunning, perception-shattering video” (Byrdie), and “Uncovers the biases we’ve all been programmed to believe” (Hypebae).

-1.9 billion media impressions

-2 million social media impressions

-113K likes

In addition, Think of a Woman sparked a social storm around gender in the comments section (“a trans woman will always be a woman”) and an outpouring of thanks from women who felt seen for the first time: “After nearly three decades of crippling cultural conditioning into hating myself, this speaks to me so deeply” / “As a bald woman with Alopecia I often feel less feminine… I love this so much.”