Gillette’s campaign better late than never
It is easy to be cynical but corporate messages on masculinity count, John M. Richardson writes
A new video ad by Gillette encouraging men to strive for “the best a man can be” puts the well-known shaving supply company on the sharp edge of the debate around the connections between “toxic masculinity” and #MeToo.
The rapid-fire ad starts by making reference to boorish male behaviours such as fighting, sexual harassment and mansplaining before suggesting that healthier attitudes are taking root.
The ad sees Gillette alter its previous slogan, “the best a man can get.” The old word “get” denotes the purchase of shaving products, but in conjunction with images of women kissing smooth-cheeked men it connotes sexual conquests and positions women as objects to be acquired.
The new word “be” suggests that embodying masculinity is a process of growth and learning for men to work at.
On YouTube, the ad has garnered twice as many “dislikes” as “likes.” Among its detractors is celebrity commentator Piers Morgan who, writing in the Daily Mail, works himself into a lather by interpreting the “pathetic, man-hating ad” to mean that “men, ALL men, are bad, shameful people who need to be directed in how to be better.”
As a high school teacher, the father of boys, and a son, I see much to celebrate in this ad and the cultural moment it represents.
Every year, I work with students to explore how gender is constructed through advertising. What we discover can be disturbing and dispiriting.
A Dolce and Gabbana ad in which gleaming, muscular, bare-chested men stand around impassively as a woman is pinned to the ground.
A Jimmy Choo ad highlighting the shoes of a wellshod female corpse whose legs protrude from a car trunk.
“Many people don’t fully realize that there are terrible consequences when people become things,” media researcher Jean Kilbourne writes. “Self-image is deeply affected. Girls’ self esteem plummets as they reach adolescence partly because they cannot possibly escape the message that their bodies are objects, and imperfect objects at that. Boys learn that masculinity requires a kind of ruthlessness, even brutality.”
As a dad, I support those voices encouraging boys to treat girls and women with respect and kindness and to live free from the expectations of a traditional masculinity that the American Psychological Association recently noted is “marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression.”
As a son, I think of my own father, who embodied the kind of swarthy, adventurous masculinity validated by post-Second World War culture.
He was an engineer on Great Lakes bulk carriers and on supertankers that sailed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf during the first Iraq war (there were so many explosions beyond the horizon, he said, he felt the sea bed tremor through the ship’s hull).
Dad could fix cars, renovate bathrooms, cook and even paint a passable watercolour. But poor communication skills affected both his marriage and career. He never spoke about how he felt sailing into a war zone, jumping off the top of the superstructure when his tanker exploded, or getting plucked from the depths by an American Navy frogman dropped from an accompanying helicopter.
Why talk when he could install a boiler, replace a toilet or upholster a couch?
On Twitter, critics post pictures of female models at a recent Gillette shindig, the company name emblazoned across the rears of their shiny, form-fitting bodysuits. It’s easy to be cynical. But I say if Gillette wants to embrace a more positive message about what it means to be male, better late than never.
Corporations are social actors. The messages they communicate and the examples they set have an impact on us all.
John M. Richardson is an author, teacher and adjunct professor in the faculty of education at the University of Ottawa.