Alaina Chun

In my version of the advertisement I removed “a girl”, “a lady”, “a man” and “a boss” and replaced them all with “your best you”. I thought about replacing them all with “a woman”, but upon further thought, I realized that looking like a woman, acting like a woman, thinking like a woman, and working like a woman can have it’s own sexist implications as well as personal connotations.

I decided to go with “your best you” because it leaves meaning up to interpretation to the reader. In order to celebrate Women’s day, we have to celebrate all women and that means something different to every woman. For this reason “your best you” seemed appropriate. There is no one way that women should look, act, think or work and that is the key that Bic missed in this advertisement. Womanhood is an intersectional experience and it is difficult to encompass that in an ad.

I wanted to make the viewer think about what “your best you” would be in relation to women’s day. As a woman, what does it look like when I look like my best self or what does it look like when I think like my best self? does this mean taking care of my body? does this mean dressing in a  certain way? These questions in contrast with what the original Bic add was dictating really emphasizes that every woman’s experience is different and that celebrating womanhood means celebrating every person who considers themselves to be a woman – whatever that means to them. By using “your best you” it leaves the definition of ‘being a woman’ up to the person who’s looking at it.