Chaps outraged by adverts need to ‘woman up’
The response to the advert, ironically, saw the very worst in men
Ilike men, and count many of my closest friends among the Y-chromosomed of the world. When the MeToo campaign broke, I was quick to criticise the movement and, in particular, the lazy picture that it painted of men as universally red-blooded predatory beasts in whose presence women were inevitable victims.
But following last week’s brouhaha over the Gillette advert and the ensuing backlash among men, I’ve found there are limits to my sympathy with the male predicament. MeToo may have painted a distorted picture of masculinity and, via the brutal court of public digital opinion, treated numerous men very badly, so men were right to be defensive about the way that campaign was conducted. But the response to the Gillette advert? Not so much.
In keeping with the new order of things, Gillette decided to trade in heroic hunksville for a bold feminist riff on its slogan: “The best a man can get.” Tackling the issues recently put in the limelight, the social media advert provided a whistle-stop tour of all the bad things that men still do. These include the indulgence of boyish violence as just “boys will be boys” horseplay; unchecked leering and lecherousness at female passers-by, and the patronising of women in the boardroom.
In the second half of the ad, a band of good men are seen checking their bad buddies; one, for instance, stops his mate from catcalling by saying: “That’s not cool.” Actually, I thought the ad was rather clever and impressive. It’s rare to see such a bold tack taken and, while I have no time for the “diversity” brigade with their obsessive box-ticking and virtue signalling, I have to say I did enjoy the range of colours, shapes and sizes on show here.
The response, ironically, saw the very worst in men. Piers Morgan tweeted with vulgar alarmism: “Let’s be clear: @gillette now wants every man to take one of their razors & cut off his testicles.” I felt sick watching the journalist Peter Lloyd duke it out on Morgan’s Good Morning Britain on ITV with two female guests who were trying to explain why they liked the advert.
As if proving its point, Lloyd, together with Morgan, shouted the women down in the most appalling manner. In the course of his hissy fit, Lloyd made the bizarre argument that the equivalent advert showing “the worst of women” would depict us crying rape and making false claims of harassment, as if these have been our hallmarks for time immemorial.
The handy word “testeria” immediately came to mind. But what made the indignation seem so off colour to me wasn’t that men were expressing their feelings, but that their feelings seem to be based on the deeply peculiar belief that the playing field is and has always been equal for men and women. It’s as though all of human history hasn’t been violently, viciously and ubiquitously stacked against women – physically, mentally, biologically, legally, athletically, intellectually… you name it. The first statutory definition of rape only came along in 1976. According to a Women’s Aid report on femicide in 2018, the vast majority of women who were killed were still being murdered by men, and three quarters by a man they knew.
So for men to explode as soon as anyone suggests that they may still have some work to do shows a deeply crude grasp of the realities of human history, and the complexities of the present. Meanwhile, some of the men complaining might want to consider that if women were to boycott all the goods and services linked to sexist depictions of women, we’d have nothing left.
There is a long and salient history of masculinity in crisis. It tends to happen, predictably, when women make gains. Just as the model of the domesticated husband emerged in the Victorian period, and women began the slow process of enfranchising themselves – boom. A masculinity crisis, with men complaining of having been castrated and feminised by domestic cosiness. Men began shunning marriage, with many of them leaving Britain for the swashbuckling excitement of the empire, excising female company entirely from their lives.
When the panic about what would happen when women got the vote was proved to be misplaced, there were said to be new assaults on what now seems to be the very fragile business of being male. Women, having run the country during two world wars, were told to put their aprons back on and be truly loving wives, coaxing and coddling their menfolk, who would not be able to cope with a new breed of empowered woman just then.
Flash forward two decades to the women’s liberation movement and fresh tantrums about the confused “new man”. Then, as now, men were quick to use the idea of gender equality against women, saying that if women wanted their rights, and their sexual liberty, they could jolly well have it – and kiss goodbye to all vestiges of masculine decency with it. Finally, by the Nineties, the meshing of the “new man”, the “lad”, and the by-then comparatively undereducated cohort of young men led to the liberal use of the term “toxic masculinity”. And here we are again.
So. To the men indignant that a razor advert depicted a spectrum of male behaviour, not all of it wonderful, some simple advice: keep calm and woman up.