Men rage while women roll their eyes
I watched the Gillette ad and I was not, like many of you, moved. I was indifferent, because no matter how noble or necessary its message, an ad is an ad is an ad.
I’m fully aware that advertising, like any mass media, shapes perception and thus has the ability to change it, but when a company dips its toe into social justice, conveniently only after a movement around a cause is well-established, I find it very difficult to tear up. (Unless that company is Tim Hortons, my Achilles heel, and the ad in question features a dad tying his kid’s skates. At this, I break down like an old Zamboni.)
So it goes that Gillette’s new viral #MeToo-themed ad — imploring men to be their best selves and, in doing so, improve the chance that today’s boys will not grow into tomorrow’s bullying, sexually predatory jerks — did not renew my hope in mankind. But it didn’t fill me with rage either.
And this, I think, is the crucial point. There is a world of difference between being unmoved by socially conscious advertising and being infuriated by it. What this week’s ongoing backlash to Gillette’s #MeToo ad has shown us is that where women tend to roll their eyes at preachy marketing requesting they do this or that, men fly into fits of rage.
The online response to this advertisement — which, to be clear, asks nothing more than for guys to intervene when boys are being bullied and when women are being harassed — is, frankly, hysterical. It is hysterical in precisely the way women are described as hysterical in Victorian novels.
Some of these men are so distressed by Gillette’s #MeToo embrace that they’ve not only taken to boycotting the razor brand, they are posting photos of themselves to social media, throwing their razors into the garbage and, in one especially frenzied case, into the toilet.
You know you’re truly committed to being a regressive blockhead when you are willing to not only throw into the trash perfectly good items you paid for, but flush them down the toilet, likely causing a plumbing issue that will put you out several hundred dollars.
It seems there are thousands of men on this continent who cannot handle a corporate entity’s suggestion that no, in fact, they are not perfect the way they are. Perhaps this is because, traditionally, advertising aimed at men presents their insecurities and vices as strengths (for example, a TV ad for a popular fast food chain tells the story of a dorky college-aged guy who manages to lure the girl of his dreams out of the arms of her handsome boyfriend via a bucket of fried chicken). In ads aimed at men, the male gender is master of his own destiny, not to mention the universe.
In ads aimed at the female gender, women are brutally insecure yogurt addicts, whose idea of bliss is a clean kitchen and a hot bath. But women are used to this framing. We are used to the contradictions of advertising that tells us to lose weight and be prettier while at the same time urging us to be self-confident and comfortable in our own skin.
Men, it seems, don’t know how to process this kind of contradictory messaging when it’s aimed in their direction. They are so accustomed to brands like Gillette glamorizing a certain kind of masculinity, they feel unmoored when a macho brand pivots from its traditional message.
This is sad, not only because it indicates a large segment of North American men is unhealthily concerned about how it is presented in TV commercials. It’s sad because it suggests these men have incredible disdain for the #MeToo movement. Though flawed in some ways — like any major social movement — #MeToo has done an extraordinary amount of good and brought long overdue justice to a great many wronged women.
This disdain is so powerful that these men lash out with obscenities on the internet and flush their money down the toilet.
Hysteria: Turns out, in 2019, it’s a guy thing.