About

Gillette's "First Shave" Ad refers to a commercial for the men's safety razor company Gillette in which a father teaches his trans son Samson how to shave for the first time using a Gillette razor.

Origin

On May 23rd, 2019, the Gillette Facebook page uploaded a video titled "First Shave, the story of Samson," in which a father shows his trans son how to shave for the first time (shown below). Within one week, the video accumulated upwards of 1.2 million views, 12,000 reactions and 8,900 shares.

"Growing up, I was always trying to figure out what kind of man I wanted to become. I always knew I was different. I didn't know there was a term for the type of person that I was."

Spread

On May 25th, Redditor SleepNowMyThrowaway submitted an article about the commercial to the /r/ftm^[1] subreddit. That day, a screenshot of an article about the commercial was submitted to /r/The_Donald^[4] in a post titled "Ah Shit, Here We Go Again." On May 27th, the @NowThisNews Twitter feed posted an explainer video about the ad (shown below). Within 48 hours, the tweet received more than 15,900 likes and 3,400 retweets.

On May 28th, a post about the commercial reached the front page of /r/transgender.^[2] Meanwhile, Ellen Degeneres posted a tweet^[3] about the ad with the message "Gillette, this is nothing short of incredible" (shown below).

Search Interest

External References