The age of the apologist male is showing no signs of slowing down and unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that Gillette is the latest bandwagon jumper to wag it’s all-knowing finger at men.
So let’s back up for a second.
A week ago, a report titled “APA Guidelines for the Psychological Practice with Boys and Men” was released and sure enough, the #MeToo movement swallowed it whole and a vortex of internet squabbling quickly took form.
Some hipsters at Gillette’s ad agency clearly got inspired by this report and decided to leverage it, or so they think, for Gillette.
The result – a SuperBowl ad called ‘We Believe’ – or what everyone calls the Gillette Toxic Masculinity commercial.
Even the leftist website Vox states:
“…it is inherently nonsensical to use feminism to sell men’s grooming products, or any products, as feminism is a political movement bent on dismantling current structures of power, which likely includes multi billion-dollar corporations like Procter & Gamble.”
Why is the Gillette Toxic Masculinity commercial so damn bad?
Let’s break it down point by point.
1 – It’s condescending
“Don’t beat people down in the streets.”
“Don’t pick on people – for ANY reason.”
“Don’t molest women.”
This of course isn’t to say these things don’t happen – they’re simply not as common as some zealots would like you to believe.
Gillette is essentially telling men not to pummel each other or to randomly touch women is a slap in the face.
They’re boldly telling men that they simply cannot think for themselves.
2 – They’re standing up for women while suppressing them at the same time
Apparently, no one at Gillette heard the expression that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Gillette is so busy puffing up it’s chest in defense of women in their commercial that they conveniently forget about the company’s role in suppressing women themselves.
One example of this is selling women razors in the first place.
That’s Gillette’s way of telling women that their hair on their legs and armpits is disgusting and that only a wookie of a woman would allow for that type of hair to grow.
Despite costing the company millions in lost revenues, the now notorious Gillette Toxic Masculinity campaign would not be the company’s last foray in finger-wagging. Believe it or not, they went right ahead and did it again, and we’ll cover that in a future post.