The transgender community has made great strides in recent years to earn recognition and respect, but it remains largely disregarded. Representation in popular culture and entertainment is rare, and positive representation even more so. Everyone is used to seeing the classic square-jawed cisgender man star in shaving commercials, but they've never seen a transgender man star in a film about shaving. A man’s first shave is a rite of passage. For over a century, Gillette has been a part of that moment. But now it's time we celebrated every man, no matter when or how they get to that moment.

In this film, we follow the stories of four transgender men as they take an important first step. Each man’s journey is unique – some fraught with fear, others surrounded by the people they love, another alone. Through this we see that each is united by the joy and pride of having the opportunity to take that important rite of passage: shaving.

For too long “The Best A Man Can Get” has stood for blade technology. But Gillette realized that it could stand for much, much more and celebrate everything a man can be – whether it conforms to traditional definitions of manhood or not.

We went to the homes of transgender men to film them shave for the first time. We sat with their families, listened to their stories and created a powerful set of films that celebrated their first shaves. The films were then offered to LGBTQ film festivals providing them with an opportunity to feature content that celebrates a segment of the population that is far too often ignored. A microsite housed a content series that included the individual stories of each man and a how-to shaving video starring one of our heroes.

In the first five days First Shave garnered over 15.8 million impressions from both mainstream national and LGBTQ-specific outlets with media placements spanning the globe putting us on pace to achieve over 2 billion impressions.