How much has Gillette spent convincing guys that their razors are “the best a man can get?” There’s no definitive figure, but a significant portion of what you pay for the brand name blades goes towards marketing and advertising to implant that thought in your mind.

A new product of the month startup called the Dollar Shave Club (you’ll have to take our word on this, the flood of guys interested in dollar razors has kept the site down most of the day) wants to cut all of that out and bring pricing down to where  it would be if you replaced TV spots and magazine ads with social media. As the name implies, that price is just $1 for a 1-month supply of double blade razors. The fanciest package is $9/month and offers a month’s worth of six blade razors.

“I donâ€t know if youâ€ve bought razors lately, but this is astoundingly cheap. In fact, razor blades are the cliché people use to convey a business that continually bilks customers out of money, long after a modest initial purchase. (See also: Printer ink. Bastards!)

One time — when we were particularly strapped for cash — my husband and I were in Costco comparing per-razor costs trying to figure out the best way to buy these obscenely overpriced four-blade luxury items in bulk. At one point my husband screamed in frustration at the heavens, “ARE THEY MAKING RAZOR BLADES OUT OF OIL!?” Like most consumers, the price points just made no sense to us. An eight pack of Gilette Fusion Pro-Glide razors can run you north of $50.” {PandoDaily}

 Judging by how long the site has been down, social media and online marketing – which was kicked off through a partnership with Thrillist – seems to be working pretty well. It’s too early for reviews on how quality compares, but if the Dollar Shave Club razors are half as good at a fifth of the price, we’re pretty sure lots of guys will take the savings and go for second best.

Over at Good, Nona Willis Aronowitz writes “the message couldn’t be clearer: natural hair on a black man isn’t a style preference or a nod to afrocentrism—it’s straight-up uncivilized.”

Styleite’s Justin Fenner expands on much of what makes the ad uncomfortable:

“But black men, according to Niveaâ€s brand messaging, are inherently uncivilized and can only become civilized if they forsake what comes out of their hair follicles naturally. And thatâ€s simply not true. Different hairstyles may communicate different things, but having a certain hairstyle (just like having a certain skin color) doesnâ€t encode certain behavior. And thatâ€s probably the most offensive thing about this ad — it suggests that if you change how you look, you can also change who you are.”

Nivea responded fairly quickly by pulling the ad and issuing an apology via Facebook.

“Thank you for caring enough to give us your feedback about the recent “Re-civilized” NIVEA FOR MEN ad. This ad was inappropriate and offensive. It was never our intention to offend anyone, and for this we are deeply sorry. This ad will never be used again. Diversity and equal opportunity are crucial values of our company.” {Nivea USA}

Looking at both ads, we believe there’s certainly some cultural insensitivity: particularly in the US, there’s a history of black people being made to feel that non-straightened hair and certain hairstyles popular among black people – think cornrows, braids, dreadlocks – are uncivilized. Which is certainly not the case, but looking at both ads we also believe that there wasn’t a genuine intent to characterize the black model’s hair as worse than the white model’s.

In both ads the “before” head is ungroomed and the “after” is the guy throwing those habits away. The black model still has facial hair in his ad, though it’s trimmed, as is the hair on his head. A shaped, groomed afro and a neat beard would still get the point across that Nivea for Men products are suitable for grooming black hair, but the man is hardly bald or completely shaved.

“Look like you give a damn” is a clear enough tagline that there wasn’t a need for any comments on civilization in either case. Still, if the black model had received the tagline about looking like hell, there probably would have been just as much negative feedback, which signals to us a campaign that probably wasn’t trying to make a commentary on hair type and acceptable societal behavior, but one that needed more time on the drawing board in general.

Nivea's other "Look Like You Give a Damn" ad

Men's crystal penis tattoos: in case you were wondering what to wear with your shiny underwear.

The Daily Mail {via Gawker} reports that 40% of the customers requesting genital crystal decoration in UK salons are men. Vajazzle crystal suppliers are responding with designs specifically for men. An Iron Cross and red lips crystal design apparently top the male design best seller list.

Okay, first we have to address the general ridiculousness of this trend as a whole. When did people start stepping out of the shower, looking down and going “just not sparkly enough”? It’s bad enough when things get hot an heavy with a partner and you lose an earring – what happens when one of the crystals falls off? That’s got to be a really awkward scavenger hunt to figure out if the crystals have ended up between sheets or… elsewhere. Not to mention, aside from 12-year-old girls, Paris Hilton and certain rappers, who’s really that into sparkly things that they go “you know, everything is just better when it’s shiny.”

Now, onto the unique ridiculousness of this spreading over to guys. Gay or straight, it’s tough to imagine anyone pulling a guy’s pants down, seeing red a red crystal lip design and doing anything but laughing (and laughter is a completely acceptable reaction). Then you’d have to explain that you’re laughing at the crystal tattoo, and not the guy’s other jewels…

We’ll take a pass on both versions of this sparkly mood killer, but would you bling your private bits?

Skincare spokesperson, nail polish mogul and Superbowl commercial thespian Justin Bieber has traded his signature bowl cut in for a closer cropped ‘do. {Popdust via Gawker}

We’re not sure if he was inspired by Bieber Fever, but John Travolta, who normally adds a rug for the red carpet, was snapped on a beach in Hawaii sans headpiece. {The Superficial}

If we’re being honest, it’s actually a much more flattering look than the wigs. Hopefully he’ll consider keeping it around.

We don’t know what this signals for the future of the famous ?(and multi-talented) follicles sitting on top of the heads of Troy Polamalu or Donald Trump, but as talented as those guys’ tresses are, it seems like less is more is the new mantra.

The latest in our ongoing series of Tattoos You Will Regret comes courtesy of singer/rapper T-Pain, who took Facebook’s like button beyond the web and onto his arm.

It's not you we don't like...

For one thing, where’s the apostrophe in “don’t”? Guess T-pain’s tattoo artist doesn’t have to like punctuation. Back to the larger point: in an age where technology changes constantly, do you really want a lifelong tattoo based on something that may not be recognizable 10 years from now? Honestly, we never though we’d see anything that would make a brand tattoo look smart, but in this case it may be the lesser of two meaningless tattoo evils.

Just think, what if you’d gotten a Geocities tattoo? Or one for Friendster? Or a MySpace tattoo? Hah, no one would… oh, wait.

A mere few years later, and this guy’s stomach is obsolete. We know Facebook is aggressive in defending its brand, and while we don’t think it’s fair in every case, we wouldn’t mind seeing them send a do not tattoo notice around for cases like these.

To be fair, this isn’t totally new. Jason Preston, the one time boyfriend of designer Marc Jacobs has his paramour’s brand name tattooed on his forearm. While the ink lasted longer than the relationship, at the very least it’s an inking decision lots of other people have made and come to regret.

Unfortunately, it seems a different kind of brand tattoo (that has nothing to do with love – not the normal kind, anyway) is taking off, for people who’ve decided that temporary brand tattoos aren’t cool… REAL brand tattoos are cool. Racked introduces us to the Louis Vuitton tattoo, and the Gucci face tattoo.

Call us old fashioned, but what happened to tattoos with names of family members or loved ones? While there may be something to be said for brands creating the kind of loyalty that would make someone want to permanently associate themselves, we can’t help but hope this falls under trademark infringement since it definitely doesn’t fall under good taste.

Troy’s hair isn’t the only Steeler with tech savvy tresses. Brett Keisel’s beard (@keiselsbeard) is a little less popular, but also maintains a presence on Twitter and Facebook.

If they can get Matthew Morrison (Will Schuester), Don King and Robert Pattinson’s hair on board, they’ll officially have the hair-brained social media thing locked down. Probably with  more insight than most celebrity tweeters too.

The hair (get it? heir/hair? okay, we’ll stop) to the uniquely coiffed throne beats them all on Twitter though. @Trumps Hair has more than 2600 followers who want to keep up with what’s on top of the Donald’s head.

We always suspected it had a life of its own.

First Gerard Butler is picked up by L’Oreal to convince men that they’re worth it, now comes news that football player Troy Polamalu has had his 35″ long hair insured for $1 million by Head and Shoulders (Polamalu is a spokesperson for the brand). {People via Dlisted} To give you a little perspective on how much more valuable Polamalu is on a follicle to follicle comparison, a pack of 16″ long human hair sells for $70 on Amazon. If you went hair crazy and covered your hair with 20 of those, it would add up to $2800 – or about 3% of what Troy Polamalu’s hair is worth.

We’re as open minded as anyone, but we have to admit that it’s more surprising to hear that the first million dollar head of hair actually belongs to a guy. Sure, Samson had hair of biblical proportions (literally), and there’s no doubting that Polamalu’s hair would even put big hair divas like Diana Ross and Chaka Khan to shame. But how many guys can relate?

While he’d be one helluva after for any company pitching hair growth products, men or women would have to be genetically blessed to replicate Polamalu’s ringlets regardless of what product they use. Plus, it’s been eight years since his last haircut, and we’re guessing there are plenty of moms, sisters and girlfriends who wouldn’t sign off on the guys in their lives taking an eight year sabbatical from the barber shop.

When asked if he’d cut his hair, Polamalu replied”With this big hair insurance–I donâ€t think so!”

While there are 1 million reasons for him not to, whenever the time comes for him to part with any of his hair, we’d love to see a wig or two (or three, or four) made from his million dollar mane for Locks of Love.

“Axe is all about being a guyâ€s wingman and helping him as he navigates the mating game.” -Mark Dwyer, Unilever marketing director {New York Times}

As Gawker commenters point out, a true wingman would probably encourage less Axe, but the brand is finding success with the strategy. Once the 18-24 target crowd finds out that mating means babies, we’re not sure if that’s the game they’ll want to play, but trading off of the prospect of heightened romantic interest has made Axe products a category leader.

Shower gels and body sprays were once the exclusive domain of women, usually offered only in scents that smelled like candy, fruits and flowers. But since 1997, men’s grooming products have grown from a $2.3 billion dollar industry to one worth $4.8 billion in 2009. {New York Times} Of that $2 billion in growth, Axe is credited for a significant portion through the introduction of body sprays for men, and other products that were usually targeted only at women.

Old Spice, and their massively popular campaign with Isaiah Mustapha have upped the stakes in the shower gel category, now claiming 10% of the market, with Axe slipping from 7.7% last year to 5.9% this year.

That hasn’t phased the Axe wingman plan though: pop-up concerts with artists like T.I. and Mary J. Blige, branded club sponsorships in the Hamptons, and commercials with a ladies’ man enjoying them are all part of the Axe Music branding plan. The hope is that by providing the meet market, concert and club goers will continue to rely on the products throughout the dating game.

According to a Unilever spokesperson, “we hope they bring a girl, because this will be a place for the mating game to happen. The idea is that we want to inherently be part of a place where the mating game happens because we want to be a lifestyle brand.”

Gerard will join the list of genetically blessed celebrities who have endorsed the beauty brand, which includes Beyonce, Eva Longoria Parker, Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson.

The actor seemed enthusiastic about his partnership on L’Oreal’s Hydra Energetic line saying to femalefirst.co.uk, “I’m excited to be working with L’Oreal Paris. I have always liked the quality and innovation of their products.”

Ruggedly handsome? Sure. But when we think of face wash, shave balm and moisturizer, Gerard Butler isn’t the first face that comes to mind. Still, we say good for him for finally putting those good looks to endorsement use!