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Gillette Is Not Wrong
Is the new Gillette razor ad a radical feminist attack on masculinity – the commercial embodiment of a woke sensibility? I was prepared to think so. But having watched it twice, I find a lot to like. The ad has been panned by some conservative commentators. With all due respect, I think they are falling into a trap. They seem to have accepted the feminist framing. Feminists see culture as a Manichean struggle. It’s women versus men. Women are benign and men are malign. For society to progress, men must change. We must extirpate “toxic masculinity.”
Understandably, this rubs conservatives the wrong way. I’ve risen to the defense of masculinity many times myself. But is the Gillette ad really “the product of mainstream radicalized feminism—and emblematic of Cultural Marxism,” as Turning Point USA’s Candace Owen put it? Is it part of “a war on masculinity in America,” as Todd Starnes argued on Fox News?
Conservatives stripping off their coats to get into this brawl are like the man who, seeing a barfight unfold, asks “Is this a private quarrel or can anyone join in?”
Let’s figure out what the fight is about before taking sides.
There were a couple of undercurrents in the Gillette ad that suggested feminist influence – the term “toxic masculinity” should itself be toxic – but overall, the ad is pretty tame, even valuable. I have no idea if it’s the best way to sell razors, but as social commentary, it’s not offensive. “The Best Men Can Be” begins by showing men looking the other way as boys fight, shrugging “boys will be boys.” It shows men laughing at a comedy portraying a lout pantomiming a lunge at a woman’s behind. It shows kids teasing a boy for being a “freak” or a “sissy.” These are followed by more uplifting images of men breaking up fights, interfering with men who are harassing women, and being loving fathers to daughters. We hear a quote from former NFL star Terry Crews, saying “Men need to hold other men accountable.” These images didn’t strike me as a reproof of masculinity per se, but rather as a critique of bullying, boorishness, and sexual misconduct.
By reflexively rushing to defend men in this context, some conservatives have run smack into an irony. Imaging themselves to be men’s champions, they are actually defending behavior, like sexual harassment and bullying, that a generation or two ago conservatives were the ones condemning. Sexual license, crude language, and retreat from personal responsibility were the hallmarks of the left. It was to epate la bourgeoisie that leftists chanted “Up against the wall, [expletive]” on college campuses. Liberals were the crowd saying “Let it all hang out,” “If it feels good, do it,” and “chaste makes waste.” Feminists were the ones eyeing daggers at men who held chairs or doors for them, and insisting that a “woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
The left won that cultural battle. Standards of conduct for both sexes went out the window. Whereas men had once been raised to behave themselves in front of women — “Watch your language, there are ladies present” – they were instead invited to believe that women deserved no special consideration at all.
As I’ve written many times, the MeToo movement may conceive of itself as a protest of “traditional masculinity,” but that’s only because memories are short. It’s actually a protest against the libertine culture the sexual revolution ushered in. Some men are behaving really badly – harassing women, bullying each other, and failing in their family responsibilities. Some women are too, though the MeToo movement doesn’t acknowledge that aspect of things. But these behaviors are not “traditional.” They’ve always existed, of course, but they went mainstream with the counterculture, which is now the culture. In any case, everyone, left and right, who values decent behavior should be able to agree that encouraging men to be non-violent, polite, and respectful is not anti-male. It’s just civilized.
Conservatives should applaud that aspect of the Gillette message. Progressives, in turn, should grapple with the overwhelming evidence that the best way to raise honorable men is with two parents. We may wish it were otherwise, but fathers — as disciplinarians, role models, and loving husbands — are key to rearing happy, healthy, and responsible sons, as well as self-confident, happy, and high-achieving daughters.
That’s the cultural reform we so badly need. Any corporate volunteers? Apple? Google?
Published in Culture
I think never-Trump pundits are the ones who’ve fallen into a trap . . .
Just occurred to me. Is this another attempt, indirect this time, by Mona to express her NeverTrump credentials? After all this commercial is taking the Trump charicature and ranting against it.
Agreed. I just commented along those lines.
Or grown women for that matter. Those mean, insecure teenaged girls grow into mean insecure, bitter women. Hah. Women are a hundred times more vicious, take it from me. At least men are direct and out in the open. Women knife you and then go, “Oh, who, me? That wasn’t what I meant at all.”
The whole anti-bullying campaign is little more than an extension of the anti-male movement. When my daughter was being bullied by other girls in middle school, the administration basically shrugged and said she needed to learn to deal with it. Boys would have been punished and/or expelled.
Not if they don’t learn rough and tumble play. Then men can learn to be just as passive agressive.
The Real agressive men will still get sex.
Good point. Anyone can be a bully, and it has nothing to do with male hormones. It has everything to do with being a jerk who likes to push people around . . . kinda like liberals . . .
Yeah, but you can’t show that in ad because if you do, feminists will start bullying you.
I believe that Gillette should sell razors products and keep their morality to themselves. If they wish to push their politics into my face then I will find my razor products elsewhere. I have already done this the the NFL, I am prepared to stop doing business with a very long list of people that dislike me or mine.
Mona has been working this particular beat since long before Trump. She’s bringing up the argument that the ad is trolling for exactly the sort of arguments being made. And why not? It’s free PR for them! She then spends the rest of her essay showing both what was good about the commercial, and what was risible, and also how the moral underpinnings of the commercial are themselves flawed. And Trump was never even mentioned.
Give credit where it is due here, she’s making good arguments, and comments like this are instead digs at her character instead.
Or a jail sentence. Aggression alone ≠ successfully bedding bevvies of women (unless alcohol and desperation are also involved). Plenty of other times it just means constantly losing out from being a jerk, and in the worst cases criminal charges.
With respect to Mona, I think Stephan Molyneux has a better interpreatation of the commercial.
The idea that the commercial is not anti-male is… well, it’s wrong. Imagine a PSA telling black men to raise and provide for their kids. The add would focus on great black fathers and never make sweeping condemnations on all black-Americans.
And that is how it should be. I’d like an Ad that respects men while talking about how some men aren’t as good as they should be.
After listening to the video and reading the comments I find myself also disagreeing with Mona. If I thought they were trying to convey what she sees I wouldn’t be in disagreement but I don’t think they are for a couple of reasons. First, the working assumption of the video is that, in general, men and traditional masculinity were bad before the #metoo stuff and now they must be different. Add to that all the “woke” buzz words and visual caricatures and I can’t bring myself to give them the benefit of the doubt.
How is this piece at all a rant?
If Gillette or any other company inserted a message of loving God and country or any other conservative tenet into a commercial, they’d be driven out of business in one week amid tweets containing the word “fascist.”
Television ads for common, commodity-type products are mostly useful in deciding which products NOT to buy. There is very little to differentiate products like razor blades aside from price. If an advertisement irritates me for some reason or if I just find it offensive (which I most certainly do in this case), then the decision process next time I’m in a store becomes simpler. Doesn’t Gillette and its parent P&G understand how easily their products can be replaced by any one of several others on the exact same shelf? In addition to being offensive, this ad is an act of bone-chilling stupidity.
If you agree with this I would recommend listening to the Bill Cunningham show, Sunday night. He interviewed Steve Deace. That was basically the topic, and he was pretty close to something I’m very curious about: people like Mona just love centralized power and they need to make it work. Steve Deace had some very poignant comments along those lines, and he has always hated Trump. Pretty rabid social conservative, but he’s very smart.
I’ve seen the whole Mad Men series. Advertising looks like a very hard way to make a living.
“Completely ad hominem”
Yeah, that’s even more effective than the mild question I asked. Thanks moderators!
Rant, slap whatever. It’s not supporting the charicature.
This may be what most of us against the tactics of Gillette’s advert see in it : the woke are exceedingly aggressive in their intimidation, intolerance, and disdain for those who don’t accept opinions they want to impose.
She is completely missing the tone and timbre of the commercial.
It’s the left’s version of “creative destruction”.
They de-constructed til all was destroyed, removed the element that actually made it work (the Chrtistian ethic that promotes sound relationships) and remakes it all in their image.
It’s counterfeit. It has the veneer of being the real thing, like 1970s linoleum tile, but scratch the surface and you find out just how rotten it is.
For those that are giving Mona and others who say there is some positives coming out of the commercial here’s an analogy. It’s like saying I don’t agree with the wife beatings but I can see how some good comes out of it. Masculinity is taking a beating here; whatever good that comes out of the point is irrelevant.
So, Mona made no mention of Trump at all in her essay, and did not suggest in any way that the commercial was a dig at the guy. But here you suggest that the commercial was itself a dig at Trump. Doesn’t your making that suggestion prove her point that the commercial is itself a rhetorical trap? You are the one inserting Trump into this, it seems, so what does that say about the commercial?
And what of this part?
She saves her best lines to throw at the Left. That’s not ranting.
Gillette’s ad is the equivalent of asking, “Did you stop beating your wife?”
The Left isn’t reading this. The article is directed at the right, and only the right, because only conservatives will be exposed to it, by and large. A few throw-away “to-be-sure”s don’t mean much in the grand scheme.
Mona says that conservatives should applaud the parts of the message that are little more than straw-man slaying. I don’t know about the men in Mona’s orbit, but I don’t recognize any of the stereotypes presented in the ad. Maybe Mona needs to associate with a better class of men.
But regardless, I decline to applaud what’s on balance just the latest example of white-male-bashing propaganda simply because it’s effective in killing it’s own straw men.
It’s shaming in a non-effective way. It shames dudes for being dudes more than it shames dudes for doing bad stuff. It conflates groping with looking at a pretty lady, and approaching a hot girl in a social situation.
You can very effectively shame people for doing bad things that they actually do. But you can’t effectively shame people for being what they are.
So, we should expect to see the next advert for detergent or the NFL to include a message about 2-parent families ? What I lament is how such an advert is intended to make us take some social position on a product or pastime. Attribute this to the subversion of the left. They virtue signal for their favorite cause 24/7. Our response is to do the same ? Seems more like a trend towards oppressive thought-control, segregating us into tribes, than advertising the merits of the product. What does a 2-parent family have to do with a razor blade ?
It’s an advertisement. To the extent Ms. Charen’s column defends the ad’s “messages,” it essentially fails to address this point. Social messages (and arguably social activist messages) are now overreaching and finding their way into one of the most researched, targeted aspects of media–advertisements–in an attempt to influence behavior. Hello Aldous Huxley.