Is Dr. Squatch Woke?

Company Overview

Dr. Squatch is exactly the kind of brand values-driven men have been begging for: loud, funny, and refreshingly comfortable being masculine. Founded in 2013 by Jack Haldrup, a former IT consultant who started making natural soap after struggling with his own skin problems, the company built a direct-to-consumer empire selling handmade, cold-process bar soap, deodorant, hair care, and cologne in unapologetically manly scents. The pitch is simple and it resonates: ditch the drugstore junk and use products actually made for men.

What began as a niche startup became one of the best-known men's grooming brands in America. By 2021, Forbes reported Dr. Squatch had already built a $100 million-plus business before its splashy Super Bowl debut, and the brand has since been described as a top-selling men's soap company with revenue reported in the hundreds of millions. Its rise was powered not by focus-grouped corporate messaging but by viral, meme-driven humor aimed squarely at ordinary guys.

The one development every parent-company tracker should note: in June 2025, consumer-goods giant Unilever announced it would acquire Dr. Squatch, with the Financial Times pegging the deal at roughly $1.5 billion. The purchase was made from private-equity backers (TSG Consumer/Summit Partners) and was expected to close later in 2025. We flag this honestly. Unilever carries its own corporate ESG and DEI baggage, and shoppers who track ownership all the way up the chain should know their dollars now ultimately reach a multinational conglomerate. Crucially, however, none of Unilever's activism has migrated down to the Dr. Squatch brand, which continues to market itself the same masculine, no-nonsense way it always has.

ESG & Sustainability

Dr. Squatch has never operated like an ESG-obsessed corporation, and that is a big part of its appeal. As a standalone brand it published no corporate ESG report, set no political emissions or social-justice targets, and never lectured its customers about their carbon footprint. The brand talks about natural ingredients and quality soap because men want a good product, not because it is chasing a sustainability score from activist rating agencies.

That said, Dr. Squatch now sits inside Unilever, which does maintain extensive ESG commitments at the corporate level. Those commitments are Unilever's, not Dr. Squatch's, and to date they are not reflected in the brand's products or messaging. For shoppers who buy on product merit and brand behavior, Dr. Squatch remains a clean pick. For those who boycott entire corporate families, the Unilever tie is the honest caveat worth weighing.

DEI Programs

Here Dr. Squatch is exactly what conservative consumers hope to find: there is no evidence of a brand-level DEI program, no diversity-quota hiring campaign broadcast to customers, and no participation in the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index (CEI), the scorecard that pressures companies into ideological conformity. The brand has never made a standalone CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge. Instead of dividing its audience into identity categories, Dr. Squatch built its whole identity around unapologetically serving men, and it has never apologized for it. That confidence is rare and worth rewarding.

LGBTQ+ Advocacy

Unlike the countless brands that repaint their logos every June, Dr. Squatch has no documented history of Pride sponsorships, Pride-themed product lines, or LGBTQ+ political advocacy campaigns at the brand level. It has stayed in its lane, selling soap to men and letting its irreverent humor, not political signaling, do the marketing. For customers exhausted by companies that treat activism as a marketing department, Dr. Squatch's silence on these fronts is a welcome return to normalcy.

Political Activity

We found no documented record of Dr. Squatch, as a brand, making left-leaning political contributions, funding progressive advocacy groups, or wading into partisan culture-war fights on the political left. Its cultural footprint runs the opposite direction. The brand's marketing leans deliberately masculine and anti-woke, and in 2025 it drew mainstream media attention for a viral limited-edition soap collaboration with actress Sydney Sweeney (the widely covered "bathwater" campaign). Critics called the campaign crude or, in Sweeney's own words, dismissed the backlash as "sexist," and the whole episode became a culture-war flashpoint. To Dr. Squatch's target customer, being attacked by the professionally offended is not a bug, it is proof the brand is doing something right.

Consumer Impact

For values-based shoppers, Dr. Squatch earns its very low woke score. It is a masculine, humor-driven, product-first brand with no ESG report, no DEI program, no Pride campaigns, no HRC CEI involvement, and no documented progressive political giving at the brand level. It refuses to scold its customers and instead celebrates them, which is precisely why it built such a loyal following.

Two honest caveats belong on the record. First, the Unilever acquisition: while the brand itself remains untouched by activist messaging, its dollars now flow up to a corporation with its own commitments, so ownership-conscious shoppers should decide for themselves how far up the chain their standards apply. Second, Dr. Squatch has faced consumer class-action lawsuits alleging that some products marketed as "natural" or "sulfate & paraben free" contain synthetic ingredients; these are allegations, and separately the industry's National Advertising Division reviewed certain comparative claims while actually affirming the brand's "no harmful ingredients" claim as supported. Those are product-marketing disputes, not evidence of woke politics.

Bottom line: Dr. Squatch is a rare mainstream brand that stayed masculine, stayed funny, and stayed out of the culture-scolding business. Aside from the Unilever-ownership footnote, it is an easy recommendation for men who want quality grooming products without a side of political lecturing.