Toxic masculinity:
The new Gillette ad that’s riling men and women
So, the new Gillette ad has caused some controversy. The brand’s old tag line of “The best a man can get” has been used to ask, in the light of the #MeToo movement, “Is this the best a man can get?” and it has got some men (and women too) very riled up.
Now let’s be clear, this is first and foremost a marketing campaign and it is doing what only the very best marketing campaigns can do — causing controversy and making people talk about it. But that aside, the message is a welcome one from a very male brand and one wonders if this could be a tangible sign of a major cultural shift which ultimately will benefit not only women, but men too.
Last week, The American Psychological Association released a report following 40 years of research on ‘masculine ideology’ that states that “traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological development, constrain their behaviour, result in gender role strain and gender role conflict and negatively influence mental health and physical health”.
This masculine ideology is more commonly referred to today as ‘toxic masculinity’ and I think that it is this term that many men find very difficult to the point of some denying that it even exists.
First of all, it is important to understand the difference between masculinity and men. Masculinity is defined as referring to the attributes that are usually associated with being male, such as strength, power, assertiveness, stoicism, etc. The toxic nature of masculinity in our culture is the negative side of these characteristics, which mean that men are generally not taught that it’s ok to be emotional, to actively nurture and to appear vulnerable or weak.
And at the extreme end of this ideology is the culture that encourages aggression and sense of entitlement. We have seen how poisonous the extreme end of this masculine culture can be and how it can be so dangerous for women.
This toxic end of masculinity is why we have more men in prisons, why more men commit suicide and why, not all, but most women have experienced #everydaysexism at some point in their lives. To say that toxic masculinity doesn’t exist is to deny all the evidence that it does.
The Gillette ad captures this culture well when it highlights the negative behaviour of some men and says that men can’ t use the same old excuses, such as ‘boys will be boys’ any longer. In so doing, it reinforces something that feminism has been saying
The Gillette ad captures this culture well when it highlights some of the negative behaviour of some men and says they can’t use the same old excuses, such as ‘boys will be boys’ any longer
for years, and that is in order for women and men to live equally, men must hold other men accountable for their actions.
Women cannot do this on our own.
If we now accept that girls and women can be whoever they want to be, if we encourage them to be strong and assertive when it matters, then why on earth would we have a problem in telling our boys and men that they too can, and indeed should, step outside the narrow gender norms that society has imposed on us for centuries?
We need to tell our sons that they too can be anything they want to be in life, be it a stay-athome dad or a rocket scientist. We need our boys and men to know that it’s ok for them not to feel ok and to ask for help. That it’s ok for them to cry and to be vulnerable.
Patriarchy, which has bred this toxic masculinity, hurts men just as much as it hurts women. The push-back by some men to this campaign by Gillette and the dismissal of toxic masculinity as being something that doesn’t exist, is not that surprising. As the saying goes “when you are accustomed to privilege, equality can feel like oppression” and so I guess that men finding it difficult to hear that it’s ok to be vulnerable and emotional when, for centuries, it has been seen as a mark of weakness or femaleness is somewhat understandable.
But times are changing and men are changing. I have just spent two weeks in Australia, that bastion of manliness, where I witnessed the younger generation of men being so much more involved in the minutiae of family life than my generation generally were.
These young men are taking responsibility for cooking and being so very hands on with their babies. If it’s happening in Australia, it’s also happening here and so I am hopeful that despite the push-back by some, often older, men, real change is happening.
But I am also thankful to Gillette for their ad and its powerful message. And I am proud to say that I have bought their blue men’s razors for years.